Terms of use
Suggestions to check, not instructions to follow.
Disaster Lab publishes general information about handling digital disasters. It is written carefully and checked against primary sources, and it is still no substitute for a professional who knows your situation. Using this site means accepting the terms below.
Last updated 27 July 2026
This is not professional advice
Nothing here is legal, financial, tax, insurance, medical, or security advice, and reading it creates no professional relationship of any kind. The playbooks describe what tends to work in common situations. Your situation has details we know nothing about: your contract, your jurisdiction, your insurer's wording, the specific state of your systems.
Where an incident involves real money, legal exposure, regulatory deadlines, or evidence that may matter later, get a qualified professional involved. Playbooks say so at the points where it matters, and that instruction is the most important one on the page.
Accuracy, and its limits
Country procedures, fees, deadlines, and official links are verified against government, regulator, and carrier sources on the date shown beside them. We mark unknowns as unknown rather than guessing.
Even so, this material goes out of date. Carriers change their fees, regulators move their forms, governments rewrite their procedures, and laws are amended, usually without warning and often without redirects. A verified date tells you when something was true, not that it is true now. Confirm anything that carries a cost or a deadline with the official source before you rely on it, and treat every figure here as a prompt to check rather than a fact to act on.
We make no warranty that the content is accurate, complete, current, or fit for your purpose, and the site is provided as is.
You act at your own risk
Recovery steps can make things worse. Restoring a backup can overwrite good data, rebooting can destroy forensic evidence, revoking credentials can lock out systems you still need, and contacting an attacker can escalate an incident. You are responsible for deciding whether a step suits your circumstances, and for the consequences of carrying it out.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, we accept no liability for any loss or damage arising from use of this site or reliance on its content, including lost data, lost revenue, lost profits, business interruption, regulatory penalties, or missed deadlines. Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot legally be excluded, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. If you are a consumer, your mandatory statutory rights are unaffected.
External links
Playbooks link to police forces, banks, regulators, carriers, and vendors so you can reach the real procedure rather than our summary of it. We do not control those sites, are not responsible for their content or availability, and a link is not an endorsement. Be especially careful during an incident: verify you are on the genuine site before entering credentials or payment details, since criminals target exactly the people who are urgently searching for help.
Using the content
You may read, print, and share these playbooks, and use them inside your own organisation for training, preparation, or live incident response. That is what they are for, and the print layout exists precisely so you can put one on paper before you need it.
Please do not republish the content as your own, or resell it. If you quote or adapt it, credit Disaster Lab and link back. The name, wording, and design remain ours.
Availability
The site is offered free and with no guarantee of uptime. It may change or disappear without notice, which is a good reason to print or save the playbooks that matter to you rather than assuming they will load on the day you need them.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, out of date, or dangerous, please tell us at [email protected]. Corrections to procedures, deadlines, and fees are genuinely welcome, particularly from people who have just been through the process.
Governing law
These terms are governed by Italian law. If you are a consumer, you keep the protection of the mandatory rules of the country where you live, and may bring proceedings there.
Changes
These terms may be updated, with the date at the top of the page moving when they are. Continuing to use the site after a change means accepting the revised version.