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Articles August 21, 2025

The Illusion of Readiness: Why Disaster Recovery Should Be Command and Control

Milanie Cleere Darrell Norton
Authors
Milanie Cleere, Darrell Norton

Many global organizations believe they’re prepared for disruption with their binders, plans, and protocols. But when disaster strikes — whether it’s a cyberattack, a natural event, or a cascading system failure — those plans often fall apart. Why? Because disaster recovery (DR) isn’t about documentation. It’s about command and control. The stakes are high: in a world of constant threat, resilience is not a contingency — it’s an essential, non-negotiable, core capability.

Common Pitfalls in Global DR

Many organizations fall into the trap of treating DR as a compliance exercise, focusing on documentation, rather than execution. Others rely too heavily on IT or security teams, leaving product and business leaders unprepared to lead during disruption. Another common issue: complacency. Outside of security and infrastructure teams, many leaders underestimate the frequency and severity of threats. In reality, global organizations are under constant attack — and the cost of inaction is rising.

The Customer Experience is the First Casualty

When disaster hits, customers don’t see your infrastructure. They see broken logins, delayed transactions, and unresponsive service. Yet most DR strategies are built around systems, not experiences — a disconnect that can be dangerous. Without a clear understanding of how outages impact the customer journey, organizations risk eroding trust in moments that matter most. In global enterprises, this problem is magnified. Different regions, business units, and product teams often operate with siloed DR plans. The result is a fragmented response that fails to protect the customer experience at scale.

The War Room Gap

A shared language around threat environments (e.g., Force Protection Condition, FPCON, cyber vectors, operational dependencies)

Unified tooling for visibility and coordination

Executive clarity on who leads, who decides, and how trade-offs are made under pressure

Without these elements, even minor incidents can cascade into major customer disruptions. This is where traditional DR frameworks fall short. While ISO 22301 and NIST 800-34 provide valuable structure, they don’t solve for the cultural and operational fragmentation that undermines real-world execution.

Real-World Impact: Engineering Readiness at Scale: A Single Survey, Global Insight

At a Fortune 500 holding company company, we led a DR readiness assessment across 10 high-impact applications. Using a single, structured survey distributed to geographically dispersed stakeholders, we captured a consistent, enterprise-wide view of DR maturity. The survey was supplemented by interviews and architectural reviews, surfacing both systemic gaps and application-specific risks.

The assessment produced executive-level insights and per-application recommendations, each prioritized and mapped into a multi-year investment roadmap. These recommendations addressed gaps in ownership, tooling, recovery objectives, and dependency visibility. To guide long-term transformation, we introduced a DR maturity model that defines a path from reactive recovery to proactive mitigation — spanning systems and data, tools and technology, and people and roles.

Beyond assessment, we delivered a DR operating model that integrates the global information security function with IT — aligning cyber and infrastructure response under a unified governance structure. We also provided a comprehensive DR toolkit, including:

A customizable playbook for war room activation

Application-specific runbook templates

A tabletop test framework to simulate real-world scenarios

These tools were designed not just for documentation, but for execution — enabling teams to build muscle memory and respond instinctively under pressure.

While testing is scheduled for the fall, the organization now has the foundational structures, language, and tools to move from fragmented documentation to orchestrated readiness. The next step is operationalizing these assets through ownership assignment, simulation, and continuous improvement — transforming DR from a compliance obligation into a core enterprise capability.

Take the Next Step Toward Operational Resilience

Disaster recovery isn’t a checklist. It’s a capability that must be led, designed, and tested. Move beyond the illusion of readiness by embedding DR into your product operating model — aligning teams, tools, and leadership around a unified response. In a world where trust is earned in moments of crisis, command and control isn’t just a DR strategy — it’s a business imperative.

Milanie Cleere

Managing Director

Milanie is a strategic problem solver who balances pragmatism with systems-level, future-oriented thinking. She brings expertise in product portfolio leadership, AI-driven process automation, and organizational transformation. Milanie draws on deep experience leading in complex organizations to guide diverse teams and scale transformation through clear strategy, technical depth, and an entrepreneurial mindset.

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Darrell Norton

Darrell Norton

Principal, Systems Integration

Darrell has nearly 30 years of experience developing enterprise solutions. Pragmatic and decisive, he excels at translating and communicating technical concepts and issues into business language, specializing in enterprise architecture, cloud integration, and SaaS system development. He’s worked with Microsoft .NET since the first beta and takes pride in the fact that his work is always tailored for each client.

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