Your systems will fail. Not “might fail” or “could fail.” They will fail. The only question is whether you’ll be ready when it happens.
Most Nigerian businesses discover their disaster recovery plans don’t work at the worst possible moment, during actual disasters. Servers crash, ransomware hits, or power surges fry equipment, and suddenly you’re learning that your “tested” backup system hasn’t actually worked in six months.
December gives you something rare: time to test your disaster recovery before you desperately need it in 2026.
What Disaster Recovery Actually Means
Disaster recovery (DR) is your organization’s ability to restore access and functionality to IT infrastructure after a disaster event, whether natural or caused by human action or error (Google Cloud). Think of it as your business insurance policy that you can actually control and verify works.
Here’s what qualifies as an IT disaster: ransomware encrypting your files at 3 AM, power outages taking down your data centre, hardware failures killing your primary servers, or even an employee accidentally deleting critical databases. Natural disasters like floods obviously count, but you’re far more likely to face cyberattacks, system failures, or good old-fashioned human error.
The consequences hit harder than most executives realize. Data privacy laws now require disaster recovery strategies. The Nigerian Data Protection Act doesn’t accept “we weren’t prepared” as an excuse. You’ll face regulatory fines on top of the revenue you’re already losing from downtime.
Why December Testing Makes Business Sense
December is your disaster recovery testing sweet spot for several practical reasons that have nothing to do with holiday spirit.
- Business operations slow down naturally.
Most Nigerian companies experience reduced transaction volumes as customers and partners wind down for year-end. This creates the testing window you’ve been claiming you need all year. You can simulate failures and practice recovery without affecting peak business operations.
- Your team has bandwidth.
Major projects typically pause before year-end. Your IT team isn’t juggling system launches, infrastructure migrations, and urgent business requests simultaneously. They can focus entirely on testing procedures and documenting results.
- You discover problems before busy season.
Q1 2026 brings the rush—new budgets, renewed customer activity, and aggressive business targets. Finding out your disaster recovery doesn’t work in January costs infinitely more than discovering issues in December when you have time to fix them.
- Testing validates this year’s changes.
Your infrastructure isn’t static. You’ve deployed new applications, migrated workloads, changed network configurations, and updated systems throughout 2025. Each change potentially affects disaster recovery procedures that worked perfectly last year. December testing confirms whether your DR plan still matches your current reality.
What Successful DR Testing Actually Involves
Effective disaster recovery testing goes beyond checking if backups exist. You need to simulate real failure scenarios and practice complete recovery procedures.
- Start with your recovery objectives.
Your Recovery Time Objective (RTO) defines how quickly you need systems back online. Your Recovery Point Objective (RPO) determines how much data loss you can tolerate. Be realistic here—claiming you need 1-minute recovery when your business actually survives 4-hour outages just wastes money on unnecessary infrastructure.
- Run actual failover tests.
Don’t just restore a test database and call it done. Simulate complete regional failures. Practice switching from primary infrastructure to disaster recovery sites. Verify applications actually function on recovered systems, not just that files got copied somewhere.
- Document everything obsessively.
Record every step team members take during testing. Note what worked smoothly and what created delays. Identify manual procedures that should be automated. Measure actual recovery times against your objectives. This documentation becomes your improvement roadmap for 2026.
- Hold honest retrospectives immediately after testing.
Schedule review sessions within days of testing while details remain fresh. Discuss what went well, what failed, how procedures can improve, and whether any surprises emerged. Make these findings visible across your organization so everyone understands disaster recovery realities.
Common Testing Mistakes That Doom Recovery Plans
Many organizations test disaster recovery but learn nothing useful because they make predictable mistakes.
Testing only backups instead of complete recovery. Verifying backup files exist tells you almost nothing about whether you can actually restore operations. Full recovery testing reveals the dependencies, configurations, and procedures that backup validation misses entirely.
Announcing tests in advance with detailed schedules. Real disasters don’t send calendar invites. While you can’t surprise your team completely, limit advance notice to test how quickly people respond and whether on-call procedures actually work.
Ignoring results that contradict desired outcomes. If testing reveals your 2-hour RTO actually takes 8 hours, acknowledge this reality and either improve procedures or adjust business expectations. Pretending problems don’t exist guarantees they’ll surface during real incidents when the stakes are highest.
Making December Testing Happen
Disaster recovery testing feels disruptive until you’ve experienced actual disaster recovery without testing. The December investment in focused testing time prevents infinitely worse disruptions during 2026 when real failures occur.
Block calendar time now for specific testing dates. Assign clear ownership for test planning, execution, and documentation. Define success criteria beyond “we ran a test.” Commit to addressing findings before Q1 2026 operations intensify.
Planning Your Disaster Recovery Test
Manifold Computers Limited conducts comprehensive disaster recovery testing for Nigerian businesses that validates complete recovery procedures rather than just checking backup boxes. Our experience implementing and testing DR solutions across banking, telecommunications, and enterprise sectors provides practical insights into procedures that work under real failure conditions.
We help organizations design realistic test scenarios, execute comprehensive failover procedures, document detailed findings, and implement improvements that transform disaster recovery from theoretical plans into verified capabilities.
Contact Manifold to schedule your December disaster recovery test. Enter 2026 knowing your recovery procedures actually work rather than hoping they might.
Don’t wait for disasters to discover your disaster recovery plan is fictional.