Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for Startups

The Outage That Almost Killed Us

A startup founder told me this story: AWS us-east-1 went down. Their entire product was unavailable. Customers couldn't access their data. The team scrambled—but they'd never practiced this scenario. It took 14 hours to failover to another region because they didn't have a plan.

Business continuity planning isn't just for enterprises. Startups face the same disasters— cloud outages, ransomware, key person unavailability—often with less resilience built in. A basic plan can mean the difference between a bad day and an existential crisis.

This guide shows you how to build business continuity and disaster recovery planning that's appropriate for a startup—without the enterprise overhead.

Understanding BC/DR Basics

Key Concepts

Identifying Your Critical Functions

Business Impact Analysis (Simplified)

Start by identifying what matters most. Not everything needs the same level of protection:

For each critical function, document:

• What systems support it? — Databases, APIs, third-party services
• Who depends on it? — Customers, internal teams, partners
• What's the impact of downtime? — Revenue loss, customer impact, contractual penalties
• What's the acceptable RTO/RPO? — How fast must it recover? How much data loss is okay?

The BC/DR Plan Components

1. Backup Strategy

Why it matters: Backups are your last line of defense. Without them, disasters become fatal.

• 3-2-1 Rule — 3 copies of data, on 2 different media, with 1 offsite
• Automated Backups — Daily at minimum for databases, continuous for critical data
• Cross-Region Storage — Backups in a different region than production
• Encryption — Backups encrypted at rest
• Regular Testing — Actually restore from backup quarterly
• Retention Policy — How long you keep backups (30 days? 90 days? 1 year?)

2. Disaster Recovery Procedures

Why it matters: In a crisis, people panic. Written procedures prevent mistakes.

• Scenario Playbooks — Step-by-step procedures for common disasters
• Contact Lists — Who to call (internal team, vendors, customers)
• Access Credentials — Secure storage of recovery credentials (not in the system that's down)
• Communication Templates — Pre-written status page updates, customer notifications
• Vendor Contacts — Support numbers for critical services (AWS, cloud providers)

3. Infrastructure Resilience

Why it matters: Building resilience in prevents disasters from becoming outages.

4. Communication Plan

Why it matters: During outages, silence is worse than bad news. Have a plan.

• Status Page — Public status page (StatusPage, etc.) updated during incidents
• Customer Communication — Who communicates, through what channels, at what intervals
• Internal Communication — How the team coordinates during incidents
• Escalation Path — When to escalate to leadership, legal, PR
• Post-Incident — How you'll communicate resolution and post-mortem

Common Disaster Scenarios

Cloud Provider Outage

• Prevention: Multi-AZ deployment, health checks, auto-scaling
• Response: Status monitoring, communication to customers, failover if available
• Recovery: Verify services restored, check data integrity, post-mortem

Database Corruption/Loss

• Prevention: Regular backups, point-in-time recovery enabled, monitoring
• Response: Identify scope, stop writes if needed, initiate restore
• Recovery: Restore from backup, verify integrity, resume operations

Ransomware Attack

• Prevention: Endpoint protection, backup isolation, access controls
• Response: Isolate affected systems, assess scope, engage IR plan
• Recovery: Restore from clean backups, verify no persistence, harden

Key Person Unavailability

• Prevention: Documentation, shared access, cross-training
• Response: Activate backup personnel, access documented procedures
• Recovery: Ensure continuity, document any gaps discovered

Testing Your Plan

Types of Tests

Common BC/DR Mistakes

Mistake 1: Plan Without Testing

A plan that's never been tested is fiction. You don't know if backups work until you restore them. You don't know if procedures work until people follow them under pressure.

Mistake 2: Single Point of Failure (The Admin)

If only one person can restore the database, what happens when they're on vacation during an outage? Document procedures. Share access. Cross-train.

Mistake 3: Backups in the Same Place

Backups stored alongside production data aren't protected from disasters that affect production. Ransomware that encrypts your database will encrypt local backups too. Store backups separately, preferably in a different region or provider.

Mistake 4: No Communication Plan

During an outage, customers are refreshing your app and searching Twitter. Silence makes everything worse. Have a status page and a plan to update it—even if the update is "we're investigating."

Quick Start: Your First Week

Next Steps

Business continuity planning isn't about preparing for every possible disaster—it's about being able to recover from the most likely ones. Start with backups, add documentation, test regularly.

The goal isn't a perfect plan—it's a plan that works when you need it. A simple, tested plan beats an elaborate untested one every time.

Building your BC/DR program? vCISO Lite helps you document recovery procedures, track testing, and demonstrate business continuity capabilities to customers and auditors—a common SOC 2 requirement.