#330 Disaster Recovery for Executives: Why Cloud & SaaS Are NOT Enough

Executives often assume cloud and SaaS providers offer complete disaster protection—yet Tom May, CEO of DifferentDev and a DR veteran, reveals this is a dangerous illusion. In reality, relying solely on cloud infrastructure leaves businesses vulnerable to data loss from ransomware, human error, or even provider outages. The true risk isn't just downtime—it's irreversible data destruction. May argues that every organization, especially mid-sized companies, must treat disaster recovery not as an IT project but as a business-critical function driven by a rigorous business impact analysis. The most powerful insight? You can’t trust your vendor—even if they’re Amazon or Salesforce. Backups must be stored outside the primary environment, tested regularly, and documented so no single person becomes a 'Superman' whose absence cripples recovery. The solution isn’t a massive budget, but a phased, minimum viable approach: start with basic backups, layer in third-party tools like Veeam, and build resilience incrementally. Ultimately, May insists, disaster recovery is self-insurance—something you pay for quietly, so you never have to use it. But if you don’t, you’ll pay far more in reputation, revenue, and survival. The episode dismantles the myth that 'the cloud handles everything,' exposing how even multi-zone cloud setups can fail simultaneously. It also reveals the hidden cost of vendor contracts: most SaaS providers cap liability far below the actual value of your data.