Disaster Recovery Plans in Data Systems: An Overview of Trends and Future Guidelines

A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is an increasing necessity for strategic management and sustainability of data systems. Either as an outcome of environmental, human or machine-related aspects, the lack of a proper anticipation, mapping and analysis may lead to a significant impact in operations. Although the topic is critical and interest on the matter is rising, an overview of DRP is not found on academic literature. Cyber risk and other variants of risk assessment in data systems are still under construction as tracks and yet are much more consolidated than the DRP itself, emphasizing the gap and opportunity this paper is based on. Therefore, the present study aims to provide a discussion on the main current trends on DRP as well as a discussion on its possible future as a guideline for academic and practitioners. DRP literature was organized into 10 categories and 59 research opportunities were presented.