Why Disaster Recovery Testing Is the Most Overlooked Security Practice (And How to Fix It)

When was the last time you successfully tested your disaster recovery (DR) plan? If you’re taking a moment to think about it, you’re not alone. DR testing often falls into the tricky spot between being absolutely essential and easy to overlook. While security teams pour resources into prevention, detection, and response, the ability to actually bounce back from a major incident often goes untested for months—or even years.

Testing your DR plan is a key defence in today’s threat-filled world, but it’s often delayed, underfunded, or done half-heartedly. This leaves organisations exposed right when they need to be at their strongest. 

DR Plans That Exist Only on Paper

A lot of organisations have disaster recovery plans just sitting in SharePoint folders, gathering dust. Sure, they look great during audits and tick those compliance boxes, but often there’s no real proof they’ll actually work when it counts.

The issue is how DR testing is treated. It’s often seen as a low-priority task for the infrastructure team instead of being recognised as a crucial part of the security toolkit. But when everything else fails, this is your ultimate safety net.

This kind of thinking can lead to serious risks. Backup systems might never get tested, restoration processes can silently fail, or recovery times could end up way longer than acceptable. In a ransomware attack, a slow or incomplete recovery can do even more damage than the breach itself. Your last line of defence shouldn’t be your weakest link.

Why DR Testing Matters More Than Ever

A few key factors are coming together to make DR testing a top security priority:

Ransomware recovery is now a security control.

Modern attackers don't just encrypt production systems—they target backups first, deleting or corrupting them before launching the main attack. Your ability to recover from immutable, tested backups becomes the difference between business continuity and business disruption.

Cyber insurers and regulators demand proof.

Gone are the days when theoretical DR plans satisfied compliance requirements. NIS2 and UK GDPR explicitly require demonstrable availability and integrity of systems and data. Insurance providers increasingly exclude coverage for organisations without validated recovery capabilities.

Hybrid environments complicate everything.

Your data spans on-premises servers, cloud platforms, and SaaS applications like Microsoft 365. Each requires specific recovery procedures, and the interdependencies are rarely tested under realistic conditions. Assumptions about restoration sequences or recovery timeframes often prove catastrophically wrong during actual incidents.

Recovery time objectives are shrinking.

Business tolerance for downtime continues to compress. What seemed like reasonable recovery targets during the planning phase may prove wholly inadequate when tested against real-world constraints and business pressure.

You can't protect business continuity without proving recoverability—and you can't prove it without testing.

How to Fix It: A Security-Led Approach to DR Testing

1. Make DR Testing a Core Part of Your Security Program

Treat disaster recovery (DR) testing like you would patching, vulnerability scans, or phishing simulations. Add recovery validation to your risk register and make sure it's owned by security leadership—not just the infrastructure team.

This change in governance ensures DR testing gets the attention, budget, and priority it needs. When it’s handled through security channels, it’s treated with the urgency it deserves, rather than being lost in the shuffle of routine maintenance.

2. Set RTO and RPO Goals—and Measure Against Them

Your Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) should match your business's risk tolerance, not just what’s convenient for IT. Business impact analyses can help you set realistic goals.

But here’s the key—test your DR plan against these goals. If you’re aiming for a four-hour recovery but it always takes eight hours during tests, your plan isn’t cutting it. Use the results to either refine your goals or improve your recovery process until they align with reality.

3. Test More Than Just Technical Failures

Traditional DR testing often focuses on hardware issues or data centre outages, but today’s risks go beyond that. You need to test for ransomware attacks, insider threats, and SaaS platform disruptions—each requires a different recovery strategy.

Add some real-world pressure to your tests. Simulate situations where key staff are unavailable, communication tools are compromised, or multiple systems fail at once. Mix in tabletop exercises to stress-test decision-making under chaotic conditions.

4. Document, Share, and Learn from Test Results

DR tests produce valuable insights for many stakeholders. Use the results to show auditors your compliance track record, demonstrate resilience to executives, and validate recovery plans for insurers.

Standardised reports can capture recovery times, gaps, fixes, and trends over time. By documenting thoroughly, you turn DR testing from a technical task into actionable insights that drive smarter risk management across the business.

5. Include Third Parties in Your Tests

Don’t just assume your managed service providers, cloud vendors, or backup suppliers will have everything under control during a real incident. Test their roles, responsibilities, and response plans alongside your own.

Collaborative testing can expose weaknesses in SLAs, communication protocols, and technical integrations before they cause real problems. Plus, it ensures everyone knows what to do—and how to work together—when things go wrong.

Taking Ownership of Recovery as a Security Control

Disaster recovery testing isn’t just another box to check—it’s a must-do to make sure your organisation can bounce back from major incidents. Without regular, realistic tests, backup and recovery plans are unproven and might fail when you need them most.

Security leaders should treat testing as a cornerstone of resilience. The five approaches shared here can help turn disaster recovery from a routine task into a strategic safety net—so you know your last line of defence will hold when it matters.

Yes, testing takes time, coordination, and sometimes new tools—but that’s a small price compared to the fallout of a failed recovery during a real crisis.

Want to learn how to test with confidence?

Join our live webinar, How to Build Disaster Recovery Against Ransomware Attacks, and discover proven methods for validating and strengthening your recovery plan.