As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly create a disaster recovery plan for a small business.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open a document and record the business sites, staff roles, critical services, suppliers, software, devices, data stores, backup arrangements and emergency contacts.
   2. Ask the people responsible for IT, facilities, finance and customer communications to fill in the unknown recovery times, backup details, dependencies and escalation contacts.
   3. Paste the completed information into the prompt, replacing every bracketed slot and leaving an item blank only when you genuinely do not know it.
   4. Ask the chatbot to create the plan and save the output in a document with separate headings for confirmed facts, assumptions and items to confirm.
   5. Compare every named system, contact, supplier, backup step and recovery instruction against your current records, then correct the document and remove any invented detail.
   6. Give the revised plan to your IT provider or a business continuity specialist to check the recovery design, security assumptions, priorities and missing dependencies.
   7. Run an agreed recovery exercise, record which steps worked and update the plan with the results, owners and next actions.

   Prompt

   Create a practical disaster recovery plan for this small business using only the information I provide. Do not invent systems, suppliers, contacts, legal requirements, recovery times, backup arrangements or technical controls. Put unknown information in a clearly labelled "To confirm" list.
   
   Business information:
   - Business name: [BUSINESS NAME]
   - Location and operating sites: [LOCATIONS]
   - Staff and key roles: [STAFF AND ROLES]
   - Critical products or services: [PRODUCTS OR SERVICES]
   - Maximum acceptable downtime for each critical activity: [IF KNOWN]
   - Maximum acceptable data loss for each critical activity: [IF KNOWN]
   
   Technology and suppliers:
   - Devices and operating systems: [DETAILS]
   - Business-critical software and cloud services: [DETAILS]
   - Hosting, internet and phone providers: [DETAILS]
   - Data held and where it is stored: [DETAILS]
   - Backup method, location, retention and most recent restore test: [DETAILS]
   - Key suppliers and dependencies: [DETAILS]
   
   Existing arrangements:
   - Emergency contacts and escalation routes: [DETAILS]
   - Insurance, policies or existing continuity documents: [DETAILS]
   - Alternative workplace or manual workarounds: [DETAILS]
   - Customer, staff and supplier communications channels: [DETAILS]
   
   Produce a concise plan with these sections:
   1. Purpose, scope and assumptions
   2. Critical business activities and priorities
   3. Roles, decision rights and contact actions
   4. Recovery steps for loss of premises, cyber incident, system outage, data loss and loss of key staff
   5. Backup restoration and access requirements
   6. Communications templates for staff, customers and suppliers
   7. Dependencies, risks and single points of failure
   8. A recovery checklist in time order
   9. A testing and maintenance schedule without inventing dates
   10. Questions that an IT or business continuity specialist must answer
   
   For every step, name the person responsible, the information or access needed, the expected result and any dependency. Separate confirmed facts, assumptions and recommendations. Do not claim that the plan is legally compliant or technically tested. End with a short list of the exact parts I must confirm with my IT provider, insurer or business continuity specialist.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.