At a Glance
In regulated sectors, downtime threatens compliance, security, and trust. Traditional DR depends on physical backups with slower recovery, while DRaaS supports rapid, cloud-based failover, automated testing, and stronger security, making it the faster, more resilient choice for modern organisations.
Why Regulated Sectors Demand Faster Recovery Than Ever
An IBM study found that 45% of UK IT professionals and leaders in highly regulated sectors, including pharmaceutical, healthcare, financial services and legal services, see compliance and regulation as the biggest hurdle.
Data security concerns come next at 43%.
These same concerns are also driving forces behind modernisation. With rising cybersecurity threats and frequent policy changes, regulated industries are under pressure to adopt more resilient, compliant systems.
This makes it essential to have a robust recovery solution that not only protects your interconnected operations but also ensures you can bounce back quickly when disruptions occur.
So the question is no longer whether to choose DR or not, but how to decide between different types of disaster recovery, such as traditional disaster recovery or DRaaS.
In this guide, we’re comparing DRaaS and traditional DR to determine which option is best for your regulated organisation.
Traditional DR vs DRaaS for Regulated Sectors
For organisations in the regulated sector, a DR plan is more than just keeping systems online at all times; it’s about protecting sensitive data, maintaining compliance, and avoiding costly downtime.
What is Traditional Disaster Recovery?
Traditional DR is a physical, on-premises backup system that replicates your primary system and fails over operations in the event of a disaster.
What is Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)?
DRaaS is a cloud-based solution with backup infrastructure and recovery managed by a provider, without the need for heavy investment in on-premises infrastructure.
Let’s understand how DR and DRaaS work for the UK’s core regulated sectors of finance, healthcare, and law.
Disaster Recovery for Financial Services
Financial organisations have the most stringent compliance and uptime requirements. A single outage has the potential to erode client trust and invite fines from regulatory bodies.
Traditional DR
A bank has a traditional DR setup that depends on a secondary site with dedicated infrastructure, staff, and complex replication setups. However, failover can take long hours or even days to complete.
DRaaS
With a DRaaS, critical financial infrastructure, like trading platforms, replicating takes place in the cloud in real-time. This means when an outage occurs, systems fail over automatically and maintain continuity while meeting compliance requirements set by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Disaster Recovery for Healthcare
UK healthcare organisations handle sensitive patient data and records that need to follow strict laws and rules under NHS Digital’s Data Security Standards and the GDPR. This means any form of downtime can directly impact patient care.
Traditional DR
A hospital with a traditional DR setup of a physical backup system may likely need a manual switchover during an outage, like a power failure. This is not only slower but also risks delay in accessing important patient information.
DRaaS
On the other hand, a DRaaS makes sure electronic health record (EHR) systems are continually and securely backed up to the cloud. In case of an outage, clinicians can access the last updated backup from the cloud without compromising patient safety or compliance.
Disaster Recovery for Legal Services
Law firms handle vast amounts of confidential client information. The slightest disruption breaches confidentiality agreements and affects reputations.
Traditional DR
A server failure or outage can render a law service provider using tape backup systems with a loss of multiple days of documents and data. This form of disaster recovery can risk litigation and compliance issues.
DRaaS
With immutable storage and rapid failover technology, DRaaS providers such as BlackBox Hosting ensure critical legal documents are backed up securely. Even in the event of a ransomware or DDoS attack, it’s possible to recover data within a short period.
Clearly, the benefits of DRaaS outweigh those offered by traditional DR for the UK’s regulated industries.
DRaaS vs Traditional DR – Which is Right for Your Business?
Weigh these four critical factors carefully before choosing between DRaaS and traditional DR.
Architecture
Traditional DR
Evaluate how well your business is positioned to set up and maintain a second physical site.
DRaaS
A core benefit of DRaaS is that it maximises cloud architecture and doesn’t require the heavy investment needed for a physical setup.
Testing and Compliance
Traditional DR
Testing the physical systems can be expensive and time-consuming, with many firms skipping it.
DRaaS
DRaaS providers often conduct regular, non-disruptive testing that not only maintains compliance but also ensures system security.
Speed and Performance
Traditional DR
Failover times in traditional DR can vary widely, from hours to longer.
DRaaS
Replication in the cloud allows for near-instant recovery and maintains business continuity, which is critical for regulatory compliance. BlackBox Hosting offers recovery of a 1-second RPO.
Security and Risk Mitigation
Traditional DR
Security needs to be built from the ground up and relies on the secondary sites’ pre-built defences.
DRaaS
Cloud environments usually have sophisticated built-in encryption, immutable backups, and advanced monitoring to mitigate cybersecurity risks and insider threats.
DRaaS is the ideal choice if your business prioritises speed, compliance, and resilience.
BlackBox Hosting’s DRaaS for Regulated Industries
Traditional DR may have served businesses for decades, but today’s regulated organisations need more than simple secondary on-premises backups. Make the most of the many benefits of DRaaS to stay ahead.
BlackBox Hosting works with organisations in the UK’s regulatory sector and understands their challenges and hurdles. With this understanding, we’ve developed a solution specially tailored for financial institutions, healthcare and pharmaceutical, legal or government organisations.
Our DRaaS provides:
- Automated replication of critical workloads
- Compliance-ready testing with full audit trails
- Immutable cloud backups to protect against ransomware
- Rapid failover to keep operations online with minimal disruption
- UK-based support and infrastructure, ensuring data sovereignty and following local regulations
Learn how BlackBox Hosting supports secure and compliant DRaaS and helps you meet your RTOs. Contact us for a free consultation today.
