Disaster Recovery Journal Spring 2026

D isaster recovery (DR) is no longer a back‑office function. It is essential to keep the business running in the face of constant disruption. As technology stacks grow more complex and recovery expectations accelerate, DR prac titioners are becoming creative problem-solvers, adapting to new platforms, architectures, and failure modes. While many organizations now position DR as a strategic capability tied to enterprise risk management, readiness remains uneven. This report examines how DR programs are evolving, where gaps persist, and what it takes to meet modern resilience demands.

Disaster Recovery Preparedness Is Evolving, But Many Aren’t Confident DR capabilities continue to make up a significant element in enterprise resil ience strategy, but the technology stack is under rapid evolution first with cloud and now with AI. Forrester and the Disaster Recovery Journal (DRJ) have partnered to field market studies in business conti nuity and DR, gather data for benchmark ing, and guide research and publication of best practices for the industry. This study, which focuses on DR preparedness, was first fielded in fall 2008, and we update it every two years to assess how DR pre paredness is addressing challenges. We designed the 2026 study to assess confidence in DR strategy; drivers fueling improvements in DR preparedness; prac tices regarding DR program governance, planning, plan maintenance, and testing; ways organizations provision and archi tect their data center recovery sites; recov ery objectives and technology adoption; the continued need to scope cloud-native, SaaS, and third-party technology services as part of DR planning; and the emerg ing impact of generative AI on workloads which must be protected and on enter prises’ ability to execute DR strategies. We surveyed 74 respondents who indicated they had a DR program and completed the survey. We detail the survey methodology in the supplemental material section of this report, and our most important find ings follow.

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