What Every CEO Should Know About Business Continuity in 2025

What would you do if your business lost access to its core systems for 24 hours tomorrow? For many organisations, the impact would be immediate and severe: material revenue loss, frustrated customers, reputational damage, and even potential regulatory fines.

The reality is, business continuity isn’t just an IT issue anymore—it’s a board-level priority. With cyberattacks becoming more sophisticated and downtime carrying bigger consequences, disaster recovery planning can’t be left solely to the IT team. Leaders need to take ownership of resilience strategy.

The Hidden Gaps in Your Current Plan

A lot of business leaders think they’re covered just because they’ve ticked the “backup” box. But when we dig into company audits, we keep spotting the same big problems:

Assumptions go untested. Sure, your IT team might mention a quarterly backup, but has anyone actually tried restoring it under real-world pressure? More often than not, the answer is no.

Outdated plans don’t fit today’s hybrid setups. Businesses now rely on a mix of systems running in their own in-house infrastructure, cloud platforms, and tools like Microsoft 365. The old backup strategies just can’t keep up, leaving critical data exposed.

Recovery processes are unclear. Backups are great, but recovering during a crisis is a whole different ballgame. Without clear, well-tested steps to get things back up and running, those backups won’t do much good.

And then there’s the accountability gap. Cyber resilience isn’t just an IT issue anymore—it’s a business risk that boards take seriously. Yet many executives don’t really know how solid their recovery plans are.

Why 2025 Changes Everything

This year is a big one for business continuity planning, and here’s why:

• Downtime now has enterprise-wide consequences. Even brief outages can cause material revenue loss, supply chain disruption, and reputational damage. For businesses competing in global markets, these risks scale quickly.

• Ransomware tactics are evolving. Attackers increasingly target backup systems, making recovery harder and forcing businesses into ransom payments if they aren’t prepared.

• Regulations are tightening. UK GDPR enforcement is increasing, and the new NIS2 directive adds heightened requirements for cyber resilience. Regulators expect tested, board-approved recovery plans—not vague policies.

• Continuity is now a competitive factor. Customers, partners, and insurers are demanding stronger assurances that your business can withstand disruption without passing risk down the supply chain.

Five Priorities for Executive Action

1. Know Your Recovery Time and Data Loss Limits

Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) aren’t just buzzwords—they’re crucial for your business. How long could your organisation actually afford to be offline? How much data loss would be manageable? These numbers should drive your disaster recovery decisions, not the other way around.

2. Move Beyond Basic Backups

Backups are great, but they’re not enough to keep your business running smoothly in a crisis. You need a solid recovery plan with tamper-proof backups that ransomware can’t mess with, encrypted storage to protect sensitive data, and regular testing to make sure everything’s ready when you need it. Oh, and don’t forget—always keep your backups separate from your main systems!

3. Own the Strategy, Delegate the Execution

As a business leader, you don’t need to get into the technical weeds of disaster recovery, but you do need to own the strategy. Make sure you’re up to speed on recovery capabilities, confirm regular testing is happening, and have someone who can explain, in plain terms, how different outages could affect the business.

4. Test Recovery Quarterly, Not Annually

Disaster recovery testing is like a fire drill—it should happen regularly, be well-planned, and always aim to get better. Testing every quarter lets you spot and fix problems before a real emergency happens. Every test is a chance to learn and improve your process.

5. Evaluate Your Current Capabilities

Whether you work with an MSP or have your own IT team, it’s a good idea to ask some tough questions about their crisis response skills. When was the last time they proved they could handle system recovery under pressure? Do they have solid plans for different situations? And can they actually meet your business RTOs, or are they just hoping for the best?

Taking Control of Your Business Continuity

Business continuity is about protecting everything you’ve worked so hard to build. Planning for disaster recovery now will always cost less—financially and emotionally—than dealing with long outages, penalties, or a damaged reputation later.

Smart leaders don’t wait for a crisis to expose weaknesses. They ask the tough questions and put solid recovery plans in place while there’s still time.

Need a clear starting point?

Join our live webinar, How to Make Disaster Recovery a Boardroom Priority, and learn how organisations are making disaster recovery a core strategic priority.