"You always have to make sure that you can recover an application with the right data and the right everything else," he says. "That's the key. I recommend that you make it a check box on your application update procedures, so you can determine if the application or system changes require any related changes to a backup recovery plan. Right after your plan is golden, you need to be able to document those changes and constantly check them to be sure they will still work."

If you leave out this step, then your disaster recovery plans are incomplete and likely won't work when they are needed, which defeats the whole purpose of having them.

covers Enterprise Applications, SaaS, CRM, and Cloud Computing for CIO.com. Follow Todd on Twitter . Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter and on Email Todd at You can also join Todd in the "CIO Forum" group on to talk with CIOs and IT managers about the things that keep them up at night.

in CIO's Applications Drilldown.