Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery: 5 Key Differences

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Many professionals operate under the assumption that their workplace will remain largely unchanged from one day to the next, finding comfort in rhythms and routines. Sometimes, however, events disrupt business as usual. A critical aspect of leadership is preparing for those interruptions, creating strategies and plans that can keep core business functions intact even under duress.

Two specific fields address potential business interruptions: business continuity and disaster recovery. These disciplines minimize the impact that a catastrophic event might have on a business’s ability to reliably deliver its products and services.

While both fields are important, and even similar in some aspects, they are not synonymous. There are important differences in business continuity vs. disaster recovery, and those in leadership or emergency preparedness roles can benefit from understanding the core distinctions.

One way to develop a clear understanding of business continuity vs. disaster recovery is through studying emergency management. An online program in this field can offer professionals the skills needed to successfully lead companies through different kinds of crises.

Why Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Matter

Business continuity outlines exactly how a business will proceed during and following a disaster. It may provide contingency plans, outlining how the business will continue to operate even if it has to move to an alternate location. Business continuity planning may also take into account smaller interruptions or minor disasters, such as extended power outages.

Disaster recovery refers to the plans a business puts into place for responding to a catastrophic event, such as a natural disaster, fire, act of terror, active shooter or cybercrime. Disaster recovery involves the measures a business takes to respond to an event and return to safe, normal operation as quickly as possible.

The Importance of Advanced Planning

When businesses face disasters and don’t have the proper plans in place, the effects can be catastrophic. The most obvious effect is financial loss; the longer a business goes without delivering its products and services, the greater its financial losses. Eventually, these losses may force a business to make tough decisions, such as cutting employees. But there can also be technological consequences, including the loss of important or sensitive data.

Having business continuity and disaster recovery plans in place can help companies minimize the consequences of a catastrophic event. They can also provide peace of mind; employees and business owners alike may feel more comfortable in a work setting where there are clear policies for how to respond to disasters.

In many companies, crisis management professionals are responsible for developing and implementing these plans, evaluating and revising them as needed, and training employees to ensure they know how to follow the specified strategies.

Similarities Between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning often seem interdependent. While the two concepts are not the same, they overlap in some areas and work best when developed in tandem.

  • Both are proactive strategies that help a business prepare for sudden, cataclysmic events. Instead of reacting to a disaster, both disciplines take a preemptive approach, seeking to minimize the effects of a catastrophe before it occurs.
  • Businesses can use both to prepare for a range of ecological and human-made disasters. Business continuity and disaster recovery are instrumental to preparing for pandemics, natural disasters, wildfires and even cyberattacks.
  • Both require regular review, and they may sometimes require revision to ensure they match the company’s evolving goals. An emergency management leader will continually test and modify these plans as needed.

Differences Between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

A closer look at business continuity vs. disaster recovery reveals some key distinctions. Ultimately, these differences highlight the fact that businesses need to have plans of both kinds in place to be sufficiently prepared for disaster.

  • Business continuity focuses on keeping business operational during a disaster, while disaster recovery focuses on restoring data access and IT infrastructure after a disaster. In other words, the former is concerned with keeping the shop open even in unusual or unfavorable circumstances, while the latter focuses on returning it to normal as expediently as possible.
  • Unlike business continuity plans, disaster recovery strategies may involve creating additional employee safety measures, such as conducting fire drills or purchasing emergency supplies. Combining the two allows a business to place equal focus on maintaining operations and ensuring that employees are safe.
  • Business continuity and disaster recovery have different goals. Effective business continuity plans limit operational downtime, whereas effective disaster recovery plans limit abnormal or inefficient system function. Only by combining the two plans can businesses comprehensively prepare for disastrous events.
  • A business continuity strategy can ensure communication methods such as phones and network servers continue operating in the midst of a crisis. Meanwhile, a disaster recovery strategy helps to ensure an organization’s ability to return to full functionality after a disaster occurs. To put it differently, business continuity focuses on keeping the lights on and the business open in some capacity, while disaster recovery focuses on getting operations back to normal.
  • Some businesses may incorporate disaster recovery strategies as part of their overall business continuity plans. Disaster recovery is one step in the broader process of safeguarding a company against all contingencies.

Leadership in Times of Crisis

Crisis management is an important skill for all business leaders. In fact, crisis management draws upon many of the other skills necessary for business success. Analytical and problem-solving skills as well as flexibility in decision making are essential for assessing potential threats and determining how to proactively address them. Communication skills, both verbal and written, are necessary for articulating a plan and training employees on how they should act in response to a crisis.

“Leadership in managing crises can minimize the damage imposed by an incident while lack of effective leadership worsens the impact,” says Naim Kapucu, Pegasus Professor and director of the School of Public Administration at the University of Central Florida (UCF) . “Organizations should have leaders with crisis management competencies to effectively manage disasters and crises based on the contingencies and environmental and organizational factors.”

Crisis management skills matter because any company can experience a catastrophe that limits its ability to function as normal, and often it will have little time to pivot and adapt. “Crises are not a good time to reorganize adequately operating organizational systems, much less try to implement wholesale organizational changes or reforms,” says Kapucu. Having a plan in place, ready to be executed, can make all the difference. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into stark relief the uncertainty that businesses face and the extreme disruptions that can take place.

Programs such as the University of Central Florida’s online Master of Emergency and Crisis Management can help leaders fortify the knowledge, competencies, and skills they need to help their enterprises weather these times of crisis.

Crisis Management Careers

Crisis management is a key part of several careers. Each of the following positions offers a different level of leadership through tumultuous times.

Emergency Management Director

Emergency management directors develop and execute the plans that businesses follow to respond to natural disasters and other emergencies. Strong analytical, problem-solving, delegation and communication skills are essential. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the annual median salary for emergency management directors in 2019 was $74,590.

Disaster Program Manager

Disaster program managers may coordinate shelters, manage triage centers or organize other services in the wake of a disaster. These professionals must be skilled in remaining calm under extreme pressure; empathy and understanding are also important. The annual median salary for this role was around $48,000, according to May 2020 PayScale data.

Geographic Systems Information Coordinator

Geographic systems information coordinators use a wide range of data sources, such as land surveys, to help anticipate and prepare for different disasters. Technical skills and data analysis competencies are vital for success in this role. PayScale reports that the annual median salary for these coordinators was around $58,000 as of May 2020.

Emergency Preparedness Manager

Emergency preparedness managers are typically responsible for making sure employees and customers are safe. They may report directly to the emergency preparedness director, whose role is more comprehensive. The annual median salary of emergency preparedness managers was around $69,000 as of May 2020, according to PayScale.

Developing a Career in Emergency Management

Business continuity and disaster recovery plans help businesses prepare for worst-case scenarios; they provide peace of mind, a sense of stability and key safeguards against major loss and disruption. The University of Central Florida’s online Master of Emergency and Crisis Management (MECM) degree program helps professionals prepare for this important work.

The MECM curriculum exposes students to key emergency management skills, including developing, testing and communicating plans. It emphasizes the financial, ethical, political and practical dimensions of disaster response. Find out more about the MECM degree program today and embark on a new career on the front lines of crisis management.

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difference between business continuity plan and disaster recovery

Warren Averett

Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery: What’s the Difference?

Written by Scott Vance on February 27, 2023

For a business to survive a disaster, having plans and processes in place beforehand is essential to ensure that you can continue to operate and recover quickly after a disruption. Therefore, every organization should prioritize business continuity and disaster recovery plans.

At first glance, these two terms can seem interchangeable or even redundant, but there are important differences that business leaders should understand when it comes to business continuity vs. disaster recovery plans.

Knowing about these two different kinds of plans and how to implement them can properly prepare business leaders for the challenges they may face when a disruptive event (such as natural disasters, cyberattacks, power outages, pandemics, labor disputes and equipment failures) occurs.

Here’s what you need to know about business continuity plans, disaster recovery plans and their similarities and differences.

Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery: Their Different Purposes

difference between business continuity plan and disaster recovery

“Business continuity” refers to an organization’s ability to continue operations and maintain essential functions during and after a disruption.

Business continuity planning includes planning for operational procedures, staffing, communication and supply chain management. The goal of business continuity planning is to make certain that an organization can continue to function despite a disruption.

“Disaster recovery” refers specifically to the process of recovering and restoring an organization’s IT systems and data after a disruption. It involves creating and implementing a plan to recover critical systems and data, including backups and redundancies, so that the organization can resume operations as quickly as possible.

Disaster recovery planning is focused on minimizing downtime and ensuring that IT systems and data are restored as quickly as possible.

So what’s the difference between business continuity vs. disaster recovery?

Business continuity focuses on limiting downtime in the case of many different kinds of business disruptions, while disaster recovery focuses on restoring efficient IT system functionality after a serious disaster.

All business continuity plans should incorporate some aspects of disaster recovery plans. After all, in a disaster, businesses need to recover their IT systems to remain operational. But disaster recovery plans won’t cover the entire scope of planning and response that a full business continuity plan would.

Technology Considerations for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plans

Technology considerations are a critical component of both disaster recovery and business continuity planning. Here are several considerations to keep in mind when it comes to your IT solutions:

Warren Averett Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery technology image

Data Backup and Recovery

Backing up critical data is essential to ensure that it can be restored in the event of a disaster. The backup system should be tested regularly to ensure that data can be recovered quickly and accurately.

Infrastructure Redundancy

To keep critical systems available during a disaster, you may need to implement redundant infrastructure, such as backup power systems, network connectivity and server hardware.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing services can provide a high degree of resilience and availability during a disaster. You may consider using cloud-based backup and recovery solutions or moving critical systems and applications to the cloud.

Remote Access

In the event of a disaster, remote access solutions can enable employees to work from home or other locations. You may need to implement secure remote access solutions as part of your business continuity and/or disaster recovery plan to make sure employees have the necessary hardware and software to work remotely.

Cybersecurity

Disasters can create opportunities for cyberattacks, so it’s essential that cybersecurity measures are in place and up to date.

Communication Systems

Communication is critical during a disaster, so make sure that communication systems are available and reliable. This may include using redundant phone systems, email, instant messaging and other communication tools.

Testing Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plans

For both business continuity and disaster recovery plans, testing is essential to ensure that it will be effective in a real-world situation.

Testing helps verify that the business continuity or disaster recovery plan is comprehensive and covers all critical aspects of the organization’s operations. It provides an opportunity to identify any missing components or areas that need improvement.

By conducting tests, you can also discover areas where the plans may need improvement (such as incomplete or outdated procedures, missing resources or inadequate communication channels) and help improve the organization’s preparedness for a disaster. It provides an opportunity to practice and refine response procedures, evaluate the effectiveness of communication channels, and identify any additional resources or training requirements.

A well-tested plan can help reduce downtime and minimize the impact of a disaster on the organization. By identifying and addressing gaps and weaknesses in the plan, the organization can ensure a more rapid and effective response to a disaster.

It’s also important to note that several industries have regulations that require organizations to have a disaster recovery plan in place and to be tested regularly. Evaluating the plan is necessary to ensure compliance with these regulations and to avoid penalties or legal consequences.

Warren Averett Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery testing image

Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery : Which Do I Need?

So, which one do you need: business continuity vs. disaster recovery?

Both business continuity and disaster recovery planning are necessary so you can continue to function during and after a disruption. However, the specific needs of your organization will determine which one is more important.

For example, an organization that relies heavily on technology may prioritize disaster recovery planning, while an organization that relies heavily on supply chain management may prioritize business continuity planning.

Learn More About Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery

When disaster strikes a small or medium-sized business, the organization’s future depends upon how prepared the company is for the disruption. The cliché that failing to plan is planning to fail seems to hold in business continuity and disaster recovery planning. Don’t wait for a disruption to occur.

If you want to learn more about business continuity vs. disaster recovery plans, or if you’re ready to create or adapt these plans for your organization, connect with your Warren Averett Technology Group advisor directly, or ask a member of our team to reach out to you to get the conversation started.

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difference between business continuity plan and disaster recovery

Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery: Key Differences

Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery, what are the key differences? This article reviews differences in priorities, timing, scope, and how these two plans overlap.

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he upheaval of the past few years has illustrated how important it is for businesses to prepare for all types of unexpected events. Natural disasters, public health emergencies, and malware can all potentially interrupt your business operations. While you can’t always prevent these types of disruptions, you can minimize their impact by developing strategic plans to keep your core business functions going even under adverse circumstances.

Business continuity and disaster recovery are terms that people often use interchangeably when discussing preparedness. However—while there is an overlap between the two ideas—each one addresses different aspects of handling business disruptions. This guide outlines the similarities and differences in business continuity vs. disaster recovery so you can develop a plan for both.

What is business continuity?

A business continuity plan outlines how you can keep your business running during a disaster or disruption. It’s not a plan to fix the underlying cause; instead, it’s focused on staying open so you can continue serving customers and generating revenue .

The pandemic disrupted business on a massive scale. Businesses that adjusted quickly were able to pivot and come out on the other side more resilient and profitable . Milwaukee Food and Tours temporarily changed its business model from offering in-person tours to delivering customized gift baskets, for example. Innovative Fitness made the shift from offering personal training in gyms to online sessions that focused on working out at home.

What is disaster recovery?

A disaster recovery plan outlines how you can identify and fix the source of the emergency. In some cases, such as a pandemic or hurricane, you can’t address the underlying cause alone. In others, such as a bug in your codebase, your internal team can fix it. Either way, you should have a plan in place to deal with elements that are within your control.

Cyberattacks are the most likely type of disaster modern businesses will face. Although you can and should take steps to protect your IT systems and data, even large corporations with almost-unlimited resources such as Microsoft experience cyberattacks. A business disaster recovery plan will help you mitigate the damage from all types of disasters, regardless of what caused them.

Key differences between business continuity and disaster recovery

It’s easy to mix up business continuity and disaster recovery plans because they’re both implemented in the event of a business catastrophe. However, understanding the differences between them will help you create more effective plans.

A business continuity plan prioritizes staying open for business and minimizing the impact of the disaster on daily business operations. A disaster recovery plan prioritizes dealing with the disaster itself and getting your systems back to their baseline as soon as possible.

A business continuity plan goes into effect as soon as you realize your business is going to be affected by a critical event. Your continuity plan comes first. The disaster recovery plan will come later, usually after the emergency has passed.

Business continuity is broader in scope than disaster recovery. It includes all factors that contribute to running your business, from back-end components such as your supply chain to front-end considerations such as staffing. A disaster recovery plan is more narrowly focused on restoring the elements that were damaged, such as your data and IT systems.

How a business continuity plan and disaster recovery plan overlap

Despite their differences, there are also many ways that continuity and disaster recovery plans overlap. Understanding how they overlap can help you save time when you’re creating them. A business continuity plan should include your disaster recovery plan since it’s a comprehensive plan for responding to all aspects of business disruption.

Both plans require proactive risk analysis to identify potential threats and how they'll impact your business operations. You’ll also need to detail roles, policies, and procedures for both. Once you’ve implemented your plans, they need to be regularly evaluated and tested.

What to include in a business continuity plan

Your business continuity plan will be unique to the needs of your business. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. However, there are some elements that should be included in every business continuity plan .

Administrative details

The first part of your plan should include the purpose and objective of your plan as well as a detailed breakdown of your timeline and budget.

The governance section includes the names, roles, and contact information for everyone on the business continuity team. Outline who is responsible for what and whom each team member is accountable to.

Risk analysis and impact

This section will require research into the types of disasters that may occur in your industry or geographic location. While you’ll want to flesh out more common crises such as a cyberattack or banking fraud , you should also think about how rare events, such as a pandemic, could affect your business. Consider how each one could interfere with business operations, including what areas will be impacted.

Preventive and responsive strategies and procedures

Building on your risk analysis, you’ll be able to determine what your preventive and responsive strategies should be. Simply being aware of the possibilities may help you implement strategies that can prevent some types of disasters. For example, nearly 73% of small businesses in the U.S. have experienced a cyberattack. Cybersecurity awareness training can help your staff avoid falling for the most common types of cyberattacks and head off a catastrophe.

However, there’s no way to prevent all disasters, so you need to include detailed procedures for responding to and recovering from crises when they do occur.

Training and testing

Include a section that covers how you’ll train your staff and test your plan. Training plans should be tailored to each role. Your response team will need more detailed training, but everyone should receive basic disaster preparedness training.

Your plan should also include testing scenarios, from tabletop exercises to full-scale drills. As part of your testing procedures, evaluate your response and incorporate your insights into your plan.

What to include in a disaster recovery plan

Your disaster recovery plan is part of the responsive procedures included in your business continuity plan. It should be focused on identifying what elements of your business—particularly IT resources—will need to be restored in the event of a crisis and the procedures for doing so. It should include the following elements:

  • A comprehensive list of all your IT assets, including data backups
  • Your top-priority resources that need to be restored first
  • Procedures for restoring critical systems
  • Backup plans and procedures
  • Training and testing plans

Planning for how your business will deal with unexpected emergencies can help you recover quickly and stay in business longer. Hopefully, you’ll never need to use your plans, but in today’s turbulent business landscape, it’s better to be prepared. One critical aspect of emergency planning is having backups for all of your critical data.

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Disaster recovery plan vs. business continuity plan: Is there a difference?

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Disaster recovery and business continuity are two terms often used interchangeably ' but doing so risks missing some of the key differences between the two strategies. To debunk the disaster recovery plan vs. business continuity plan debate, we look at:

  • What each means
  • Where the two are similar
  • How they differ
  • Why they are often confused
  • Whether your organization needs both

What is Business Continuity?

Definitions of a business continuity plan vary, as you'd expect; as with any corporate strategy term, there are different interpretations. But while definitions may diverge slightly, the general understanding is that a business continuity plan (BCP) is designed to ensure that your business can maintain its operations in the event of a disaster, whatever form that might take. On the other hand, a disaster recovery plan focuses on how your organization will recover and rebuild following any crisis. IT firm Phoenix NAP believes that 'Disaster Recovery (DR) versus Business Continuity (BC) are two entirely different strategies, each of which plays a significant aspect in safeguarding business operations.' Best practice business continuity plans follow a set pattern with some standard features. A comprehensive BCP will:

  • Identify the potential risks your business faces
  • Allocate responsibility, putting in place the teams you need to continue operations
  • Be built on best practice subsidiary and entity data
  • Make back-up arrangements for power, systems and communications
  • Prepare for recovery, identifying your disaster recovery team and the steps you will take to build back

This last point is where the potential 'grey area' between business continuity and disaster recovery starts to become apparent. Disaster recovery is a subset of business continuity planning and a vital element of a BCP. As well as planning for an immediate crisis-driven response, a business continuity plan should consider 'what happens next.' It's not just about how you deal with the immediate aftermath of a crisis, whether that's a cyber-attack, fire, flood, terrorist attack or any other human-made or natural disaster. It's about what you do next to restore operations on a more permanent footing. This is where the disaster recovery element of your planning comes in.

What is Disaster Recovery?

The disaster recovery plan and business continuity are very closely interlinked. Disaster recovery is the process of ' as you might imagine ' recovering after any business interruption or crisis. As InvenioIT puts it, 'A disaster recovery plan ...aims to answer the question: 'How do we recover from a disaster?'' What does a disaster recovery plan entail? It is typically a formal document, with details of steps needed to ensure you can recover rapidly from any disruption. IBM believes that a DR plan is more focused than a business continuity plan; as we said above, a subset of the BCP that focuses on how you recover your IT and systems to ensure operations return to normal as soon as possible. These formalized plans came into being in the 1970s. Businesses switched from being paper-based operations to ones dependent on systems and computer-based operations, technologies that require rapid response and clear action plans for contingency and recovery. Minimizing downtime by having recovery plans for your IT infrastructure and other operations means businesses can reduce the length and impact of any unexpected disruption.

Disaster Recovery Plan vs. Business Continuity Plan: How Do BCP and DR Plans Differ?

What is the difference between a disaster recovery plan and a business continuity plan? Given that you need to consider both business continuity and disaster recovery, it's worth exploring the two differences. Partly, as we mentioned above, the difference is about scope. The BCP is broad, while a DR plan will be more focused, looking specifically at how to get systems up and running in the aftermath of a disaster. An IT disaster can take many forms, from a localized hardware failure to a company-wide data breach ' and can have huge ramifications, with some 93% of businesses suffering an IT disaster going on to file for bankruptcy within a year . Another difference is in timing; the BCP should kick in as soon as a disruption is identified. Potentially, this means moving to back-up servers, power generators, remote working. On the other hand, the recovery plan tends to follow once the initial emergency response is in place, looking further ahead to determine how the business will rebuild and return to more normal operations. In either case, a written plan is vital, including a detailed business impact analysis that should be updated regularly. We've written before about the importance of keeping your business continuity plan up-to-date ' a lack of accurate data on your systems can significantly impact your ability to maintain operations and recover longer-term. Central to this is the need to maintain accurate information on all your entities and subsidiaries . Doing so enables you to methodically record the systems and technologies that will be impacted by an outage across the entirety of your organization. Once you're confident that you have captured all the applications and hardware you need to consider, your disaster recovery plan should include:

  • Detailed plans for restoring each of these critical applications and pieces of infrastructure
  • The timeframe for doing so
  • The people who need to be involved ' along with emergency contact details to ensure they can be contacted in the event of any communications interruption

The ramifications of a disaster can be significant for an organization, including lost income, reputational damage, regulatory breaches and associated penalties, financial or otherwise, and missed opportunities for business growth while recovery is prioritized. The 'disaster recovery plan vs. business continuity plan' debate, then, is slightly spurious ' because you clearly need both. Having defined plans, both to respond in the immediate aftermath of a crisis, and to recover following the initial crisis period, is essential. To help organizations with their planning, both for business continuity and disaster recovery, Diligent has long-standing expertise and a suite of solutions. The software supports businesses that manage entities, compliance and organizational documents, enabling companies to minimize and mitigate the risks posed by any disruption. You can find out more by getting in touch to request a demo.

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Business Continuity vs Disaster Recovery – Understanding the difference

Business Continuity vs Disaster Recovery

It can often be confusing when talking about business continuity vs disaster recovery.  Not only is there an overlap in between business continuity (BCP) and disaster recovery (DR), but these terms are often used interchangeably, which further adds to the confusion.

Simply put, the purpose of business continuity is to ensure that critical business functions work continuously with minimal downtime in case of disruption. On the other hand, disaster recovery aims to restore business processes as soon as possible.

Presented below is a detailed explanation of these terms, what they are, how they overlap, and what makes them distinct from one another.

On this page:

Understanding Business Continuity

What is disaster recovery, what is the difference between business continuity and disaster recovery, how do they work together – where business continuity and disaster recovery overlap, business continuity vs disaster recovery – does your business need one, or both, business continuity: risk management, business continuity planning: risk assessment, how to start disaster recovery planning.

Business continuity is a way of temporarily addressing the disruption until the issue can be fixed.   In the event of a disruption, to ensure that your organization can continue to operate, you need to undertake business continuity planning exercise.

As an example, say your office experiences flooding. A business continuity plan (BCP) details the actions, processes, and responsibilities required to secure your essential assets, continue your critical business processes, and ensure staff still have somewhere to work from. Such steps may include the setting up of a temporary office or arranging for your employees to work from home.   

Business continuity plans usually focus on business applications and online systems, network and telecommunications services, and network and server access. Effective business continuity plans can enable a business to get its systems back up and running promptly, limiting damage to your organizations’ productivity.  

Business continuity planning starts with a risk assessment, and business impact analysis (BIA) to determine the scope of the plan, regulatory, and legal obligations. These first two steps form the foundation of the BCP, allowing you to gauge the risk and impact of any potential disruption to your business.

Business Continuity vs Disaster Recovery

A business continuity plan must have an alternative to maintain customer service in case of disruption. These alternatives can include data backup, emergency office locations, and emergency IT administrative rights. Moreover, the BCP must outline clear risk management strategies and set clear objectives for measuring success.

The process of dealing with interruptions in business operations due to natural disasters, power outages, and human errors is called disaster recovery (DR). DR focuses on the immediate mitigation of any damage caused by a disaster.

When it comes to business continuity vs disaster recovery, disaster recovery is the process of resolving a disruption by identifying the incident source and applying a way to fix it. As such, most disaster recovery plans (DRP) focus on specific deadlines that must be met, and are very technical to prevent significant damage in the event of a catastrophic incident.

Disaster recovery plans will include RTOs (recovery time objectives) , which state how soon a product, service or activity must become available following an incident. The failure to meet the RTO will result in the levels of disruption escalating.

In the previous example of a flood: your business should address any likelihood that your computer systems may become water-damaged.  As such, you may mitigate this by restoring your systems from a backup to new computer hardware. The RTO will be duration it takes to restore the data to new hardware, which could be from a couple of hours, to up to a few days or weeks.

In this scenario, your business will need to find a way to continue to operate without its systems for the duration of the RTO, i.e. the time taken to restore your data to new systems.  There will likely be other issues too, such as addressing the cause and any broader damage.

Business continuity plans are determined according to the estimated recovery time. BCP is no longer in operation once the business can return to its original setup, having fixed every part of the organization that is impacted.

Acronis Cyber Protect

When it comes to business continuity vs disaster recovery, the key difference between business continuity and disaster recovery is when the action plan takes effect.

Disaster recovery forms a part of your overall business continuity plan (BCP), a subset of your broader BCP, forming part of the “mitigate” and “recover” portion of your business continuity plan.

For example, in business continuity, you have to keep your processes functional during and after the event. On the other hand, disaster recovery focuses on how to return to normal when the event has been completed.

Business Continuity vs Disaster Recovery - differences

Business continuity aims to keep your business operational in the event of a disruption, enabling a return to full normal business operations after the end of the crisis.

BCP, or business continuity planning, focuses on preserving the functionality of the overall business, through continuous improvement in both internal and external operations, including the set up of preventative controls and management of customers and employees.

Disaster recovery aims to restore your operations and IT systems as quickly and efficiently as possible following a catastrophic incident. Disaster recovery includes the IT contingency methods and mechanisms, such as data backup, for your critical business applications and functions.

Disaster recovery planning aims to minimize business downtime, maintaining, where possible, access to your critical IT infrastructure and operations, such as data, hardware, software, networking equipment, power, and connectivity, to get your business back up and running.

Business Continuity vs Disaster Recovery

Business continuity planning establishes the blueprint to enable you to maintain business processes and procedures as close to “business as usual”.  Disaster recovery planning, on the other hand, focuses on the tools and solutions needed to restore your affected technology and data.

While disaster recovery is a component of business continuity, there instances when disaster recovery plans can be activated without invoking your broader business continuity plan.

For example, if you experience a power outage, you will have a reliable disaster recovery plan in place, allowing you to failover to a secondary site and be back up and running with minimal disruption to your employees and customer. In such a scenario, your entire business continuity plan would not need to be activated.

Provided any incident has not impacted your data, IT systems or IT infrastructure, business continuity can be invoked independently of your disaster, in certain instances.

If, for example, your business is facing a public relations crisis, you may need to issue statements to both internal and external stakeholders, to come out of the crises. Since there is no impact on your IT infrastructure, only your business continuity plan will be activated.

Business Continuity vs Disaster Recovery

Of course, as in the flood example given earlier, your business continuity and disaster recovery plans can overlap.

Having understood the differences in disaster recovery and business continuity, it now becomes clear that you need both .

Having a business continuity plan, without a disaster recovery element to it, will cause most businesses to scramble to try and fix the technology crucial to your business operations.

The lack of a disaster recovery strategy will take you longer to identify and implement a fix in the event of a catastrophic incident, significantly impacting your business.

On the other hand, while a disaster recovery strategy will enable you to fix and restore your technology and data quickly, the lack of a broader business continuity plan will hamper productivity and communication, severely impacting your ability to manage your teams proactively to ensure the maintenance of service, consistency, and recovery from a disaster.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Most of the time, business continuity risks are manageable. You can quickly identify natural disasters, but it’s not easy to identify cyber events. It depends on your business location; for example, your office or business is in an area where the risk of a hurricane is always there, so you can expect business interruptions from a hurricane.

You also need to take IT risks into account. DDoS attacks are on the rise, and these attacks cause servers to slow down or stop working. Regardless of the service you provide, these attacks can interrupt your business. So there should be a proper plan for risk identification and mitigation.

It is similar to other risk identification processes , and you need to understand the IT infrastructure. It would help if you considered the following questions.

  • What software, systems, information, and networks are critical for maintaining business operations? How are all these connected?
  • Which cyber attacks threaten this software, systems, and networks?
  • How could natural disasters affect these systems?
  • Which third-party vendors are critical for maintaining business operations?
  • What action plans and measures are in place to prevent cyber risks to our software and systems?
  • What measures are in place to prevent third-party vendors from affecting our business operations?
  • Do we have a data encryption system in place for remote access in case of a business interruption?
  • Do we have a data backup and recovery systems in place?
  • Can we maintain the endpoint encryption in case of a business interruption?
  • Is there a system to maintain emergency administrative authorization to keep business running?

All these questions can help in the risk identification process.

When you have created a risk list for potential software, system, network, and third-party outages, you need to establish a policy to recover from these interruptions and get back to normal. For disaster recovery planning, you need to consider the following questions:

  • Do we have a detailed written plan and chain of command for recovering from these interruptions?
  • Who will do the recovery tasks?
  • Do we have any specific timeline for disaster recovery?
  • Which documentation is required for full recovery?
  • How to recover business data ?
  • How to get back to normal operations once the event is over?
  • How can we measure our compliance with user authorization policy?
  • How to measure the efficiency of event response?
  • How to document all the corrective actions?
  • Is there any process to interview individuals involved in the process of disaster recovery?

These questions can help create a proper disaster recovery plan.

A disaster recovery plan provides assurances to the survival of your business, both during and after a disaster.  When formulating your disaster recovery plan, you should consider, and include both RTO and RPO, to ensure your business can recover effectively from a disaster.

Recovery time objective (rto) – helps to calculate how quickly your business needs to recover it infrastructure and services in the event of a disaster or incident to maintain business continuity., recovery point objective (rpo) – this is the maximum tolerable amount of data your business can ‘afford’ to lose. rpo is a useful metric for determining how often your business should perform data backups., for instance, you identify an rto of 4 hours for your business, and your systems are capable of a 2 hour restore time. consequently, it would be unnecessary to make a large investment in hardware/software to decrease the restore time to 1 hour, as the existing capability of a 2 hour restore time meets business needs..

  • Understanding business continuity and crisis management
  • Creating a business continuity plan
  • Managing Technology Risks
  • Why all organizations need a data breach response plan
  • Using cloud computing to achieve business continuity
  • How to perform a cybersecurity risk assessment

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Lucy has more than 23 years of experience in the technology industry. Specialising in the cloud and telecommunications sectors, Lucy has previously worked in senior management roles within HR & Operations for major national and international organisations such as BT, O2 and more recently, Vodafone. Lucy is currently the Deputy Online Editor at BusinessTechWeekly.com

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Disaster Recovery vs Business Continuity: 5 Top Differences

Caroline Duncan : Jan 19, 2023 12:30:00 PM

business continuity vs disaster recovery

Table of contents

What is business continuity?

What is disaster recovery, 5 differences between disaster recovery and business continuity.

Business continuity plan vs disaster recovery plan: do you need both?

What to include in a business continuity plan

What to include in a disaster recovery plan, the risks of not having business continuity and disaster recovery plans, why communication is critical in disaster situations.

The term business continuity is used to describe a business's process to remain operational during and after a disaster. This includes contingency planning for how a company will operate, who will carry out particular roles, where the business will operate from, and what effects this will have on normal business operations.

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Disaster recovery is a term that describes the plans a company puts into place that it will use to respond to a disaster or other critical event. This can include natural disasters, fire, data loss, cyber-attacks, terrorism, accidents, active shooters and other incidents that have the ability to hamper the business’ operations. Disaster recovery plans help to guide the organization in its response to the incident or event and provide guidance on returning to usual operations safely.

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What is the difference between business continuity and disaster recovery? There are some similarities between the two planning processes: they empower a business with proactive strategies to help it prepare for a catastrophic event. However, there are several differences that organizations should be aware of when it comes to business continuity vs disaster recovery:

  • Essentially, business continuity is a focus on keeping the business operational while a disaster unfolds and in its immediate aftermath. On the other hand, disaster recovery32 is a focus on restoring processes, systems and IT infrastructure and data following a critical event.
  • Disaster recovery plans often involve scenario planning and conducting preparedness drills and other exercises long before there is an actual incident.
  • The delivery of a business continuity plan is at a different time from a disaster recovery plan.
  • They have different goals: business continuity plans are concerned with limiting downtime, while disaster recovery plans are concerned with ensuring the company doesn’t suffer from inefficient systems functions.
  • Business continuity is concerned with functioning in some capacity, albeit possibly reduced. Disaster recovery is concerned with getting back to normal business functions.
Real-life example of business continuity: Back in 2013, lightning struck the office building of a South Carolina based IT company that hosted servers for 200 clients. The company’s infrastructure was badly affected: cables were melted, computer hardware was burnt, equipment was destroyed and the office couldn’t be used at all.   The company had already implemented business continuity plans five years earlier that included relocating its client servers to a remote data server where continual backups were kept. Clients didn’t experience any issues, and employees had to relocate to temporary office premises for a period of time.

Business continuity vs disaster recovery plans: do you need both?

In order to ensure business continuity or disaster recovery, it is essential to have formal plans in place.

While it is possible to have just one or the other, businesses really should have both disaster recovery plans (DRP) and business continuity plans (BCP) in place to successfully navigate and recover from a disaster. While they are different, they do have some overlap and work well together to help minimize disruption and losses.

disaster recovery and business continuity-min

When developing a business continuity plan for your organization, you need to consider the following:

  • Create a list of all the critical business functions in your organization
  • Create a business impact analysis
  • Develop a range of different crises scenarios and consider how they could interrupt your business operations
  • Develop strategies to mitigate any vulnerabilities you have identified to maintain functionality in a disaster.
  • Identify employees who will have key roles in implementing business continuity processes.
  • Provide training to relevant employees
  • Review and evaluate your business continuity plan regularly.

The disaster recovery plan has some similar requirements and features to the business continuity plan. When developing one, you need to consider the following:

  • Identify people in your organization who should form a disaster recovery team.
  • Identify the critical processes and functions that could be affected by a disaster.
  • Identify potential disaster risks and consider how they could affect your business operations.
  • Design disaster recovery strategies and processes.
  • Devise back-up plans and procedures.
  • Ensure your employees are trained.
  • Test and maintain your plan on a regular basis.

Failing to be prepared for a critical situation or a disaster can have significant consequences for a business if it is caught out without appropriate plans.

This can include:

  • The inability for the business to function following a crisis
  • Reduction in productivity following a crisis
  • Financial losses
  • Reputational damage
  • Potential legal consequences, particularly if failure to plan and protect data results in regulatory violations
  • Death or injury to employees, customers, the public etc.
  • Complete data loss.

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When your organization faces a crisis, it is important that your keep employees informed from the outset.

You must send regular, relevant, concise and factual information to employees, letting them know what is happening and providing them with any instructions to follow if necessary. As the situation changes, you should keep updating your staff.

Failure to inform your employees can cause false information and rumors to take hold. This can lead to mistrust, mistakes and can even worsen the situation.

If you need to reach all your employees quickly, using IT alerting software or an emergency alert system is one of the most successful methods of doing so.

DeskAlerts combines both functions. It will enable you to send messages quickly to thousands of employees at once in a way that can’t be ignored. You can reach employees no matter where they are working: in the office, on the road, in a non-desk role or at home, all over the world. The system uses a variety of communications channels, including pop-up alerts , desktop tickers , digital signage and push notifications on mobile phones to ensure your messages get through.

We’ve prepared some examples to help you get started using DeskAlerts pop-up alerts:

Example of a business continuity message that can be tailored to suit your company:.

Important information for all staff.   There has been a [type of incident] that is affecting our operations at [location]. As a result the following services/activities are unavailable and/or have been significantly affected [list these here].   We are enacting our business continuity plan so that we can continue to operate, although in a reduced capacity. Our website, social media channels and call centers have been updated to keep our customers and the community informed about the situation. We expect that the situation will last for [time frame] and are doing everything possible to get back up and running as normal. We will keep you updated as the situation unfolds.   Staff who have been affected should [list what is required of them during this time]   Your patience and cooperation at this difficult time is appreciated.   [CEO name]

Example of a disaster recovery message that can be tailored to suit your company:

Important information for all staff.   As a result of [describe incident] our systems have been severely impacted. This is affecting [company name’s] ability to carry out business. We have now enacted our disaster recovery plan and we have a dedicated team working on resolving the issue and restoring our systems and data.   This issue is expected to take up to [estimated time frame] to be resolved. In the meantime, staff can [list what tasks or work you may have employees do in the interim]. Further information will be communicated as the situation unfolds.   Staff are reminded to maintain confidentiality about this situation and not to post on social media or talk to the press. Customers with questions can be referred to our call center who will have the most up to date information and will prevent misinformation or old information from being circulated.   Your patience and cooperation at this challenging time is appreciated.   [CEO name}

Any business can find itself mired in a disaster when it least expects it. Having robust contingency plans in place will help to ensure that the business comes out the other side still able to operate.

What are disaster recovery and business continuity plans?

A disaster recovery plan is designed to save and recover data and other business processes in the event of a critical incident. A business continuity plan is designed to keep a business functioning in some capacity when it finds itself involved in a critical incident.

How is business continuity planning different from disaster recovery planning?

Business continuity plans are concerned with establishing how business operations will function in the event of abnormal circumstances as a result of an emergency or disaster. A disaster recovery plan is concerned with how applications and systems will be reinstated and returned to normal operation.

What is the difference between BCM and DR?

BCM – business continuity management – is an organization’s ability to keep delivering its products and services during a disaster. DR – disaster recovery – is generally about technology and refers to how an organization recovers from an incident.

What is BCP in disaster recovery?

In the disaster recovery process, a BCP is a business continuity plan that describes the way a company may mitigate loss of business and define the requirements to continue operations in a disaster situation.

What comes first, disaster recovery or business continuity?

Business continuity planning and disaster recovery involves following a process. A company should have business continuity planning as the foundation of its disaster planning – therefore it needs to happen before disaster recovery planning.

Is business continuity a new name for disaster recovery?

Business continuity is different from disaster recovery. It is focussed on keeping a business functioning in some capacity after a critical incident.

What is the difference between DRP and BCP in cyber security?

There are some differences in disaster recovery versus business continuity. Business continuity planning involves strategic long-term plans for a business’s uninterrupted operations in the event of a threat or disruption. Disaster recovery planning is a short-term tactical plan used to deal with specific computing and other IT-related outages .

Learn more about cybersecurity in the workplace .

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Business continuity vs disaster recovery: The difference explained

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If you’re in IT, you’ve definitely heard business continuity plans (BCP) and disaster recovery plans (DRP) mentioned together. Sometimes, these two are merged into one acronym spelled out as “BCDR”. And while BCP and DRP are closely related, they solve for fundamentally distinct issues.

Before defining their differences, it’s vital to understand just how important a role BCP and DRP play in an organization. Specifically, BCP and DRP help an organization continue operating. Disruptions in business are inevitable. Without a plan, the core functions of the business cannot run smoothly, and this can impact the bottom line.

For instance, when natural disasters strike small to medium businesses, many are never able to recover. Even if they initially recover, 25% of SMBs are out of business within a year following a disaster. And the number of costly disasters is only increasing. NOAA (National Centers for Environmental Information) reports that in the last five years, the number of billion-plus dollar disasters (adjusted for inflation) in the United States has increased to an average of 17.8 events per year , whereas the average between 1980-2022 was just 7.9 events per year.

Today we’ll examine the Venn diagram between BCP and DRP; how they complement each other, overlap, and combine to help protect a business from significant disruption during disasters.

Let’s dive in.

What Is a Business Continuity Plan?

A business continuity plan spells out how an organization will continue to run while experiencing a disaster or major disruption. These can include things like natural disasters, data breaches, strong economic downturns, hardware failures, and human errors. The core goal of a business continuity plan is to keep the business’ core functions operational throughout the disruption.

A business continuity plan is tailored to the specific needs of your organization. However, the components listed below comprise the core of a strong plan.

Identification of critical business processes and resources

What are your business’ major functions? What resources are necessary to maintain those functions? Which processes should take precedence when a disaster occurs?

For example, if your firm is a food processing organization, some of the critical business processes could include:

  • Sourcing raw materials
  • Manufacturing products
  • Inspecting products for safety
  • Delivering finished products to retail stores and customers
  • Employee management and payroll

 Establish roles for participants and stakeholders

Another important component is a clause spelling out stakeholders and their roles. Knowing who’s responsible for what in times of disruption ensures a business runs smoothly throughout a disaster.

  • An emergency preparedness manager is responsible for ensuring employees and customers are safe.
  • An emergency management director develops and carries out the plan for the business to follow
  • A disaster program manager is responsible for organizing other services, including shelters or triage centers.
  • A large business may want to put together a committee of individuals responsible for different areas of the organization including technology and communication.

Detailed documentation

Every bit of data and workflow needs to be detailed and recorded in the BCP. When a disaster strikes, your organization will know exactly what to do and in which order since there’s a recorded blueprint decided upon beforehand. At minimum, evacuation policies need to be documented, contact lists need to be created and the participants and stakeholders listed above need to create plans for their areas of responsibility. If hazardous materials are at play, a separate plan needs to be made for handling. Disasters are chaotic; a documented plan helps make them less so. After a decision is made, write it down and store it somewhere that everyone knows about and can access.

Business impact analysis

What will the organization lose when a certain disruption strikes? For example, one cybersecurity report estimates small businesses lose almost  $8,600 an hour  during unplanned downtime, so being able to  protect your business from downtime  is paramount.

What specific losses will the organization incur? Organizations are faced with losses including declines to output and revenue, harmed reputation, impact of client or customer wellbeing, disruption to flow or delivery of services.

Defined (and documented) RTO and RPO

The recovery time objective (RTO) details how long systems, processes, or data can be impacted  without fatally affecting a business. For instance, if your RTO is 3 hours, operations must be running again within 3 hours of a disaster.

Conversely, the recovery point objective (RPO) outlines how much data an organization is willing to lose during a disruption. For example, if an enterprise’s RPO is 15 minutes, the organization must have a data backup every 15 minutes to achieve the RPO goal.

When creating your BCP, you’ll need to set the RTO and define the RPO. The goal of both is to minimize the chances of data loss and speed up the resumption of operations. But, it is not possible to have zero downtime or zero data loss. RPO and RTO can’t be based on hope or idealism but have to be based on what is realistically achievable (in terms of feasibility and cost), balanced with what is critical for business viability.

Testing in advance of actual disruption

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy” so… it’s probably best if that first encounter happens in testing. You will not be able to control for every eventuality but, the more you test and prepare the smaller your risk surface is. That’s why it’s critical to test how your plan holds up during a simulated disaster. Unfortunately,  23% of organizations never test their BCP or DRP . Don’t be one of those 23%; please.

There are a few ways to test your BCP. First, you can create a checklist. Second, walk through the exercises. And third, you can produce simulations and ensure your plan is built to protect your organization to the fullest.

A BCP test seeks to find out the following:

  • If the plan works when disaster strikes
  • Gaps and opportunities within the plan
  • Whether the business can meet its RTO and RPO goals
  • Whether the emergency communication plan will be effective

Testing your plan simulating the disruptions most likely to affect your organization is crucial. Data breaches or loss, human error, climate disasters, hardware failure, and power outages are common disruptions to test in advance.

Testing should happen once per year, and a commonly employed mechanism to do so is a  tabletop exercise .

difference between business continuity plan and disaster recovery

What Is a Disaster Recovery Plan?

A disaster recovery plan is detailed documentation showing how a business can quickly recover operations after an unplanned incident. For example, a data breach disaster recovery plan might include how it will restore data access and IT infrastructure after the breach. Even though they are often used interchangeably the DRP is usually a component of the business’ larger BCP. Every disaster requires continuity but not every continuity issue is as the result of a disaster. 

The main objectives of the DRP include the following:

  • Keep infrastructure and human resources safe
  • Guarantee continued business operations
  • Minimize financial losses
  • Protect organizational data
  • Prevent reputation loss
  • Limit liability

Below are the most vital components of the disaster recovery plan:

  • A summary of critical processes, resources, and systems
  • Stakeholders responsible for these processes, resources, and systems
  • Detailed steps to recover, restart, and reconfigure the critical processes and systems
  • RTO and RPO
  • Any other emergency and mitigation steps that are essential to recovering after a disaster

Before creating the disaster recovery plan , you’ll need to conduct a disaster impact analysis and document risks associated with respective disasters. Doing so helps you identify which resources are needed where and how long it will take to bounce back.

How are BCP and DRP Similar?

BCP and DRP both work to ensure that an organization’s core functions are not hindered in times of disaster. They take a proactive approach to protect the organization and minimize loss during disasters. When creating both plans, you’ll need to account for business critical processes, systems, and resources. You’ll also need to define the RTO and the RPO when creating both plans. Another essential overlap between the two is the need for impact analysis and testing before making the plan official.

Finally, neither plan is set in stone. Business continuity and disaster recovery plans require constant review to align with changes in IT infrastructure, organizational goals, and existing threats.

How Do BCP and DRP Differ?

BCP and DRP complement each other and overlap during planning, but they have different functions. For starters, the business continuity plan is typically focused on organization-wide strategic planning. A disaster recovery plan, on the other hand, details how an organization can continue to run specifically during or after a disaster.

A BCP broadly covers every necessary detail, including the resources, processes, IT systems, and stakeholders across the business and covers a variety of issues which a business may face (including things like succession planning). More importantly, the BCP outlines step-by-step what needs to happen during and after a certain disaster.

A disaster recovery plan is a fundamental part of the business continuity plan. Often the DRP focuses on IT and how an organization will recover or restore IT infrastructure, applications, and systems critical to business operations following a disaster (physical, cyber, natural etc).

Put simply: the key difference is that the DRP assumes something has already happened, while the BCP includes components intended to prevent issues in the first place.

Be Ready with CrashPlan

Disaster and disruptions don’t discriminate based on whether you’re a small business or an enterprise. If disaster strikes and you’re not prepared, you risk heavy financial loss, damaged reputation, and potential liability.

Business continuity and disaster recovery plans add a layer of protection for when disasters occur. They’re a proactive approach to ensure you’re minimally impacted by disruption. Data recovery is a critical piece of this puzzle; how can your operations continue after a disaster without access to your data?

CrashPlan’s automatic cloud backup gives you immediate, easy access to endpoint data after hardware failure, natural disasters, data breaches, or any other calamity.

Find out today how CrashPlan helps you safeguard and access your organization’s data during disasters.

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Business continuity vs. disaster recovery: What's the difference?

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Business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) are often used in coordination with one another, or even interchangeably as terms. But they are two different things. With the pandemic making the importance of business continuity known, leaders should understand the key differences between BC and DR.

What is business continuity? The big picture

BC is a methodology that allows organizations to keep their business running in the event of a crisis and return to full functionality when the crisis ends. It’s a process of continuous improvement that reflects both internal and external operations, focusing on preserving the functionality of the overall business. This includes setting up preventative controls and managing employees and customers.

[ Also read: What does a business continuity plan include? 5 key elements . ]

BC planning revolves around the actions your organization must take during and following an event to ensure that the business can function as usual. You need strategies in place, for example, to respond when resources such as equipment, workforce, workplace, third-party vendors, IT services, and data are unavailable.

3 factors a business continuity strategy should address

BC planning must include all factors that are involved in normal business operations. Your response strategy must account for the following three key factors:

1. Communications

When a crisis occurs, communication with your employees, users, and shareholders is critical. Human resources (HR) plays a key role in ensuring active, consistent, and timely communication between your organization and the staff.

For external communications, social media is a vital tool to provide timely updates to outside stakeholders and users. When an incident arises, many users turn to social media first for acknowledgment and updates.

For example, if Netflix goes down, users won’t go to  Netflix.com  for information; they’ll head to Netflix’s social accounts. Take control of your message and have a plan in place for responding on social.

2. Workforce response

Workforce response is equally important in the event of a crisis. Your employees should know who to contact and what is expected from them – especially what to avoid doing. It’s your responsibility to keep your employees informed and educated on these matters.

As businesses grow and threats evolve, it’s critical for employees to be involved in the BC plan. Keep them updated about the event, your organization’s BC plan, and any changes in BC policies.

3. IT infrastructure recovery

BC planning also includes IT infrastructure recovery: How will you bring your IT systems back online following a disaster?

This is where DR comes into play. The recovery strategy typically involves the BC and IT teams working hand in hand.

What is disaster recovery? A subset of BC

Disaster recovery, as part of an overall BC plan, is about restoring your IT systems and operations as efficiently as possible following a disaster. DR includes the backup systems and IT contingency methods for your organization’s critical functions and applications.

The objective is to minimize business downtime and reclaim access to your vital IT infrastructure and operations – including data, hardware, software, networking equipment, power, and connectivity – so you can get back up and running.

Where BC and DR overlap – and where they don't

While DR is a subset of BC, there are times when it can – and should – be used without activating your entire BC plan.

If you experience a power outage, for example, and you have a reliable DR plan in place, you can fail over to your secondary site and be up and running with little or no disruption to your internal and external users. In such cases, you wouldn’t need to invoke your entire BC plan.

BC can also act independently of DR, as long as the event hasn’t impacted your IT infrastructure. For instance, if your organization is facing a public relations crisis, you need to get out in front of it by communicating statements to both internal and external stakeholders. But if there’s nothing wrong with your IT infrastructure, you’d only execute your BC plan.

Of course, your BC and DR plans often overlap. For example, if a wildfire takes out your data center, you need to enact your BC plan to communicate with those who’ve been affected and provide updates to your employees, customers, vendors, etc. But you must also invoke your DR plan to fix the affected infrastructure or fail over to your secondary site.

Planning for before, during, and after an event

BC is about more than just being prepared for an event; it’s about having plans in place for before, during, and after a disruption.

Suppose you’re hit with a cyberattack – you invoke your DR plan and quickly recover all your data. While your DR may have been successful, your BC plan must account for the aftermath of the event – which is often more important. The aftermath often revolves around communication.

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Eventually, the news that your organization was hit with a cyberattack will leak. How will you respond, and who will deliver the message? How will you convey the lessons learned to regain customer and shareholder confidence?

Your DR may end when you fail over and fail back following a disaster, but your BC encompasses the entire spectrum of an event.

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What’s the difference between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery?

Sep 01, 2023

A business continuity plan (BCP) and a disaster recovery plan (DRP) are essential components of modern business resilience strategies , ensuring the resilience and survival of organizations in the face of unexpected disruptions. These plans fall under the broader umbrella of Business Continuity Management (BCM), a holistic approach to identifying potential risks and developing strategies to maintain essential operations.

The core distinction between business continuity vs disaster recovery plans lies in their scopes. A BCP encompasses an organization's strategy to manage and mitigate a wide range of potential risks that could disrupt normal operations. This includes not only technological disasters like data breaches or system failures but also factors such as natural disasters, supply chain interruptions, and even pandemics. On the other hand, a DRP primarily focuses on the recovery of IT systems and data after a disruptive event has occurred.

Both business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans are pivotal for organizational survival in today's complex and unpredictable business landscape. A comprehensive Business Continuity Management strategy incorporates these plans to address a range of risks, from minor disruptions to large-scale disasters. By doing so, businesses can minimize the impact of disruptions, maintain customer trust, and position themselves as resilient and reliable entities in their respective industries.

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Business Continuity Plan Template

A business continuity plan (BCP) template serves as a structured framework that organizations can use to create a comprehensive strategy for maintaining essential operations during disruptions. This template outlines the key elements necessary to develop a robust plan, often in conjunction with a disaster recovery plan (DRP), to ensure the resilience of the business.

The template typically starts by defining the scope and objectives of the plan. It clarifies the purpose of the BCP, whether it's focused solely on IT systems or encompasses broader business functions. It also outlines the goals of the plan, such as minimizing downtime, preserving data integrity, and ensuring the safety of personnel.

A business continuity plan checklist is an integral part of the template. This checklist assists organizations in systematically identifying potential risks, evaluating their impact, and devising strategies to mitigate them. It covers various aspects, including risk assessment, business impact analysis, resource allocation, crisis communication, and alternative work arrangements. By following the checklist, organizations can ensure that no critical elements are overlooked.

Assessing business continuity risk assessment is the foundational step in creating a BCP. It involves identifying vulnerabilities, evaluating potential impacts, and devising strategies to minimize downtime and data loss. This preventive approach enables organizations to proactively handle challenges, reducing the severity of disruptions.

The template also provides guidance on creating a communication plan that outlines protocols for notifying stakeholders, employees, customers, and the public during a crisis. It includes strategies for maintaining operations remotely and relocating key functions if necessary.

While a business continuity plan template provides a standardized structure, its effectiveness lies in customization. Organizations must tailor the template to their specific needs, considering their industry, size, and unique operational requirements. The template should evolve with the organization, reflecting changes in technology, personnel, and potential risks.

A BCP template serves as a foundational tool in crafting a resilient strategy for navigating disruptions. It simplifies the process of developing a comprehensive plan that covers both business continuity and disaster recovery aspects. By adhering to a template and incorporating it into the organization's culture, businesses can enhance their preparedness and response capabilities, ensuring minimal downtime and preserving their reputation even in the face of unforeseen challenges.

How To Write A Business Continuity Plan

Writing a business continuity plan involves strategic thinking, cross-functional collaboration, and a deep understanding of your organization's operations. It's essential to involve representatives from various departments to ensure comprehensive coverage. Remember, the effectiveness of the plan lies not just in its creation, but also in its consistent testing, refinement, and integration into the organizational culture. By following these business continuity and disaster recovery plan steps and adopting a proactive approach, businesses can enhance their resilience and minimize the impact of unexpected events on their operations.

Initiation and Planning Phase. Begin by identifying key stakeholders who will be involved in developing and implementing the BCP. This phase involves defining the scope, objectives, and resources needed for the plan. Determine the risks your organization faces, ranging from IT failures to natural disasters.

Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis (BIA). Conduct a thorough analysis of potential risks and their potential impacts on various aspects of your business. This involves understanding the critical processes, systems, and data that are essential for ongoing operations. Assign priorities to each component based on their criticality.

Strategy Development Phase. Based on the risk assessment, formulate strategies to mitigate and manage risks. Design contingency plans for different scenarios, including communication strategies, resource allocation, and alternative work arrangements. Address both IT and non-IT aspects, covering personnel, facilities, and supply chains.

Implementation Phase. Define roles and responsibilities for each phase of the plan. Identify who is responsible for activating the plan, coordinating actions, and managing communications during a crisis. Ensure that all employees are aware of their roles and trained to execute them effectively.

Testing and Exercising Phase. Regularly test the BCP through tabletop exercises and simulations to identify gaps and refine the plan. These drills help teams understand their roles and responsibilities in a controlled environment and provide opportunities for improvement.

Maintenance and Review Phase. A BCP is not a static document. It should be regularly updated to reflect changes in the organization's structure, technology, and risks. Periodically review the plan to ensure its relevance and effectiveness.

Integration with Disaster Recovery Plan. While BCP focuses on maintaining overall business functions, the DRP specifically deals with IT systems and data recovery. Integrate the two plans to ensure a seamless response to both business and technological disruptions.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan for Information Security

A business continuity and disaster recovery plan for information security is a comprehensive strategy that organizations implement to safeguard their critical data, systems, and operations in the event of unexpected disruptions. This plan ensures the continuity of business processes while also addressing the unique challenges posed by cybersecurity threats.

For instance, consider a scenario where a cyberattack compromises an organization's IT infrastructure. In this case, a well-structured plan would encompass both BCDR aspects. The BC component would focus on maintaining essential business functions, possibly through alternate processes or manual workarounds, while the DR strategies would concentrate on restoring compromised systems and data integrity.

For information security, there are some similarities with a regular BCDR plan, with some important additions:

Risk Assessment and Impact Analysis. Identify potential cybersecurity risks and assess their potential impact on information assets, systems, and business operations. Determine the criticality of each system and data component.

Preventive Measures. Implement robust cybersecurity measures to minimize the risk of attacks, such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and regular security audits.

Backup and Data Recovery. Establish regular data backup protocols and off-site storage to ensure the availability of crucial information in the event of data loss. Develop strategies for data recovery to restore systems to their pre-incident state.

Incident Response. Define clear incident response procedures to swiftly address and mitigate cyber incidents. Assign responsibilities for different phases of the response process, including containment, eradication, recovery, and lessons learned.

Communication Plan. Develop a communication strategy that outlines how information regarding cybersecurity incidents will be shared with internal stakeholders, external partners, and the public to maintain transparency and manage reputational risks.

Testing and Training. Regularly test the plan through simulations and tabletop exercises to identify gaps and refine procedures. Provide training to employees to ensure they understand their roles during a cybersecurity incident.

Disaster Recovery vs High Availability. Another comparison lies between disaster recovery and high availability (HA). HA focuses on minimizing downtime and ensuring continuous access to critical systems, often through redundancy and failover mechanisms. While HA is a component of DRP, the latter involves a more comprehensive approach, encompassing not just availability but also data integrity and restoration after a crisis.

By effectively addressing cybersecurity risks and aligning BCDR strategies, organizations can mitigate the impact of cyber incidents and maintain the integrity and availability of their information assets.

Business Continuity Frameworks

Business continuity frameworks provide organizations with structured approaches to ensure the ongoing viability of their operations during disruptions. These frameworks come in various types, each catering to different aspects of business continuity. Here are three common types of Business Continuity Frameworks:

Comprehensive Framework

A comprehensive framework offers a holistic approach to business continuity. It covers all aspects of an organization's operations, from IT systems and data recovery to personnel management and crisis communication. This type of framework is well-suited for organizations that have complex operations and need to ensure continuity across various departments and functions. It involves detailed risk assessments, business impact analyses, and detailed plans for both business functions and technology recovery.

Technology-Centric Framework

In technology-centric frameworks, the focus is primarily on IT systems and data recovery . This type of framework is essential for organizations that heavily rely on digital operations and data management. It involves designing robust DRPs and HA strategies to ensure that IT systems can be quickly restored or switched to backup systems in case of failures. This framework is particularly valuable for industries like finance, healthcare, and e-commerce, where uninterrupted access to systems is critical.

Industry-Specific Framework

Certain industries face unique risks and regulatory requirements. Industry-specific frameworks tailor business continuity plans to address these particular challenges. For example, healthcare organizations might need to ensure patient data security during disruptions, while financial institutions must maintain transactional integrity. These frameworks take into account sector-specific regulations and best practices to create tailored business continuity strategies.

Ultimately, the choice of a Business Continuity Framework depends on an organization's size, complexity, industry, and risk tolerance. Some organizations might opt for a combination of frameworks to ensure a well-rounded approach to their business continuity plan and disaster recovery plan. Regardless of the chosen framework, the goal remains consistent: to minimize the impact of disruptions and maintain essential operations to protect the organization's reputation, customer trust, and long-term success.

Who is responsible for business continuity plans?

The short answer to this is, “Everyone.” Responsibility for a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is typically assigned to a team or individuals within an organization who are equipped to oversee its development, implementation, and maintenance. While the specifics can vary based on the organization's size, structure, and industry, there are key roles responsible for different aspects of the BCP:

Executive Leadership. The top management, including the CEO or COO, holds overall responsibility for approving the BCP and allocating resources for its implementation. They provide strategic direction and ensure that business continuity aligns with the organization's objectives.

Business Continuity Manager/Coordinator. This individual or team is directly responsible for overseeing the development, execution, and testing of the BCP. They collaborate with various departments to ensure the plan's effectiveness and manage its ongoing maintenance and updates.

Risk Management Team. The risk management team assesses potential threats, vulnerabilities, and their impact on business operations. They play a crucial role in identifying risks that the BCP needs to address and ensuring that mitigation strategies are in place.

IT Team. IT professionals are responsible for the technical aspects of business continuity, including Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs) and High Availability (HA) strategies. They ensure that critical systems and data are protected and can be restored swiftly in case of disruptions.

Department Heads. Leaders of various departments contribute by providing insights into the critical functions and resources under their purview. They help in identifying dependencies, critical data, and necessary recovery time objectives.

Employees. While not directly responsible for creating the BCP, all employees play a role in its success. They need to be aware of their roles during disruptions, follow protocols outlined in the plan, and actively participate in training and testing exercises.

Collaboration among these stakeholders is essential to develop a comprehensive and effective BCP. The plan's success hinges on clear communication, shared understanding of roles, and a commitment to maintaining the organization's resilience in the face of unexpected events.

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Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery; What’s the Difference?

Tim King

  • Best Practices ,

Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery What's the Difference

There is a breadth of information out there that suggests these two topics are one in the same. On the contrary, although Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery are grouped because they have to do with business preparedness, both are focused on separate objectives. It is wrong to use the terms interchangeably, so in an attempt to gain a clearer focus, let’s break each topic down.

  • Business Continuity

Business Continuity planning refers to the processes that stakeholders take to ensure that normal business operations can continue during a disaster. Ideally, this plan provides uninterrupted access to data and a safe place for employees to work. Successful continuity plans typically involve making sure that network connections, online systems, phones, network drives, servers, and business applications are allowed to run without downtime.

Business Continuity is broad and refers directly to management oversight and planning involved with continuous business function. Unlike Disaster Recovery, which is data-centric, Business Continuity is business-centric. Business Continuity plans are graded by their ability to limit downtime, and in a perfect world, the systems that are put in place will completely prevent the company from going offline.

  • Disaster Recovery

Disaster Recovery plans typically involve getting systems up-and-running after a disaster. Unlike Business Continuity plans, Disaster Recovery solutions involve restoring IT infrastructure and accessing copies of data stored offsite without really focusing on making a business operational during a crisis.

Maintaining a Disaster Recovery plan is vital to ensure that it functions properly should it be needed after a catastrophic event. In addition, recovery time should be the main focus of recovery planning, as the sooner a company’s vital business data can be restored, the quicker an organization can begin functioning normally again. To execute a proper Disaster Recovery plan, all of a company’s employees must know exactly how to react if stakeholders put it into effect.

The Bottom Line

Business Continuity is the first defense against a disaster threatening the proper function of business. However, Disaster Recovery is a must for any organization who cannot function without its vital business data. Although Disaster Recovery is just a smaller part of the larger Business Continuity umbrella, enterprise organizations would be wise to employ both strategies for full protection. Disaster Recovery techniques are more preventative in nature than continuity tools, which are typically used to maintain smooth business operations.

This article was written by Tim King on May 3, 2018

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Tim is Solutions Review's Executive Editor and leads coverage on data management and analytics. A 2017 and 2018 Most Influential Business Journalist and 2021 "Who's Who" in Data Management, Tim is a recognized industry thought leader and changemaker. Story? Reach him via email at tking@solutionsreview dot com.

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By: Angela Cook on October 14, 2021

Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery: What Is The Difference?

What happens when a critical issue arises and affects the momentum of your company’s day-to-day business operations? Whether your business is faced with a major disaster, your business needs to have a plan in place for the business to operate normally again. 

When it comes to averting security risks and planning for a disaster, most businesses think that the terms business continuity and disaster recovery are interchangeable when they are not.

Running a business while preparing and planning for a disaster can be hard to do. At LDI, our Managed IT team, we first provide a complimentary IT Security Risk Assessment to assess our client’s current security posture. We then work closely with clients to create a business continuity or disaster recovery plan that aligns with their security needs and goals.

This article will first identify what a disaster is. We will then define business continuity and disaster recovery, along with how they’re different.  By the end of this article, you will be able to consider which suits your business.

What Constitutes As A Disaster? 

The practice of business continuity and disaster recovery revolves around the before and after events of a disaster. Events are often categorized as a disaster when they are pretty severe and stop a business’s operations from running normally.

These disasters often align with one of the two categories listed below:

Cybersecurity Disaster

Cyber attacks can include malware, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and ransomware attacks .

Essentially any attacks instigated by a malicious perpetrator who wants to gain access to your business’s confidential data, operating systems, and overall IT infrastructure.

Natural Disaster

Natural disasters include fires, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, industrial accidents, and even epidemics or pandemics, such as COVID-19.

These natural disasters are at times unavoidable and can affect a business’s entire IT infrastructure.

According to The Hacker News , IBM’s studies have found that human error has been a major contributing cause to 95% of all data security breaches. Common human errors such as an employee clicking on a link included in a phishing email or a malvertisement can lead to significant damage to your company’s data and operations. 

Whether your company faces a cybersecurity disaster or natural disaster, it’s best to know the difference between business continuity and disaster recovery to decide which is better for your organization.

What Is Business Continuity (BC)

Business continuity involves keeping your business operational while a disaster is in effect. 

Business_Continuity_vs_Disaster_Recovery-02

How? Well, a major part of business continuity is abiding by a business continuity plan (BCP). This plan typically begins with a business impact analysis (BIA) that identifies the plan’s scope and calculates the legal, contractual, and regulatory obligations associated with the disaster.

This analysis acts as the foundation for planning and justification of the costs associated with the business continuity program.

An IT security risk assessment and penetration test often get conducted simultaneously as the BIA; this way, the impacts that may affect your managed service providers (MSPs) can be considered.

Next, your BCP must include a documented plan for maintaining and continuing business operations when a natural or cybersecurity disaster occurs.

Business continuity means implementing risk management tools for your managed IT provider or in-house IT department to follow. 

Most importantly, a BCP will include practical alternatives that allow your business to maintain customer services and protect your data even though a disaster is occurring. A few helpful options may consist of data backup or relying on emergency office locations.

What Is Disaster Recovery (DR)?

Rather than finding a way to prepare for the damage a catastrophic event can cause, disaster recovery primarily focuses on getting your business back to normal. 

Business_Continuity_vs_Disaster_Recovery-03

While disaster recovery focuses mainly on restoring your IT environment and data access after a disaster, it also enables your business to return to full functionality after a disaster occurs.

Disaster recovery incorporates a set of tools and procedures that enable the recovery or continuation of your IT infrastructure and systems following a natural, cybersecurity, or human-induced disaster.

Moreover, a disaster recovery plan (DRP) can help your company transition from alternative business processes back to processes your business would follow regularly. 

A DRP will contain detailed instructions on how to best respond to unexpected disasters and incorporate strategies to minimize the effects of the disaster on your IT infrastructure and business operations.

This plan aims to help your business regain access to its data and critical IT systems after a disaster has occurred. A DRP ensures that your business can handle and respond effectively to a disaster.

What Is the Difference Between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery? 

While business continuity and disaster recovery focus on helping businesses cope when disaster strikes, there are a few differences.

Here are two main differences to consider.

1. Different Priorities

Business continuity focuses on keeping your business operational during a disaster . In contrast, disaster recovery focuses on restoring your IT infrastructure and data access after a disaster.

Both business continuity and disaster recovery have different priorities, and it’s up to your business to choose which it wants to focus on should a disaster ever occur.

2. Different Plans

Another key difference between business continuity and disaster recovery revolves around when the plan for each takes place.  

Business continuity requires your business to keep operations functional during the disaster and right after . Disaster recovery focuses on dealing with the aftermath of the disaster.

While each includes an “after” response, disaster recovery mainly focuses on getting your business back to normal.

For example, let’s say a flood destroys your office’s IT equipment. A business continuity solution may allow employees to work remotely or from another office location that your business has unaffected by the flood.

However, this solution is not sustainable long-term because your company isn’t properly set up for remote work. This solution would not be a sustainable long-term solution.

Your disaster recovery solution would involve getting employees back in their original office location and incorporating ways to replace damaged equipment.

Which Is Right For Your Business?

The truth of the matter is, both business continuity and disaster recovery can help your business. Business continuity acts as a strategy that allows your business operations to carry on with minimal service downtime or outage. 

Disaster recovery plans focus on immediately restoring data and critical applications you are operating when a disaster occurs. 

Before deciding which one is suitable for your company, identify your priorities. It would also help clarify how long your company can wait to get back to full operation before it starts affecting your finances and reputation. 

If your business transactions occur mainly online, your business should prioritize data protection and disaster recovery. 

Suppose the disaster mainly affects the safety of your employees and the current work they’re completing. In that case, your business should focus on business continuity.

LDI’s Managed IT team takes a proactive and reactive approach to ensuring your IT environment is equipped to handle disasters. Our Managed IT team can help you craft a detailed BCR, DRP, or both.

Reach out to an LDI representative today to learn more about business continuity and disaster recovery options .

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Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery: 5 Key Differences and the BC/DR Relationship

difference between business continuity plan and disaster recovery

Business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) are easily confused terms. They seem almost interchangeable, but they’re not quite the same functions. Disaster recovery is actually a part of business continuity and involves a plan for getting business back to normal after a disaster occurs. Business continuity involves a wider breadth of planning and encompasses plans for keeping a business running during and following a disaster or disruption of any kind.

Every organization should have both a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan in place before disaster strikes, in order to keep everything functioning as smoothly as possible with minimal disruption for stakeholders. Let’s review five differences between business continuity and disaster recovery while looking into ways the two are interrelated.

A key difference between business continuity and disaster recovery is business continuity is wider in scope, encompassing all business functions necessary to keep the organization running, regardless of what kind of crisis arises. Disaster recovery has a narrower scope, focusing on systems impacted by a disaster that need to be recovered or replaced for an organization to get back up and running.

Whereas business continuity includes strategies to maintain all essential business functions, from supply and delivery chains to human resources and operations, disaster recovery focuses specifically on restoring any adversely affected business functions. For example, a business continuity plan would likely include a strategy for maintaining operations in the event of a cyber attack , while a disaster recovery plan would include steps for recovering any lost data and patching up vulnerabilities to return to business as usual. 

Another key difference between business continuity and disaster recovery is the timeline during which you would implement each set of plans. Business continuity plans are set in motion the moment a crisis occurs and sustained during and after the crisis. In the case of a pandemic , you would implement your continuity plan when it becomes likely your stakeholders are going to be impacted by an outbreak. You would continue to employ any continuity measures, such as working from home and sourcing from backup vendors, until the threat has completely subsided. 

Disaster recovery plans are set in motion after an emergency event is over, and these plans are sustained until business has returned to some semblance of normal. In a pandemic scenario, an organization might begin implementing a disaster recovery plan, which could include bringing employees back to the office, once case numbers dropped significantly and the threat of contagion was minimal.

3. Plan Components

The key components of business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans also vary. When creating a business continuity plan , you should take the following general steps:

  • Form a continuity planning team
  • Perform a business impact analysis
  • Design and implement your plan
  • Train and educate your employees
  • Regularly assess and evaluate your plan

As you’re putting together a business continuity plan, you’ll want to create a list of all critical business functions and consider how a variety of different crisis scenarios could disrupt each of them. Once you have identified potential vulnerabilities, brainstorm strategies for maintaining those functions during a crisis.

For example, if you realize your organization is relying heavily on one or two suppliers, consider diversifying or creating a list of backup vendors. You should also earmark the resources you’ll need in likely crisis scenarios, train personnel to carry out the plan and implement software to enable communication in the midst of a crisis. Your organization must be able to maintain communication with all stakeholders before, during and following a crisis. An emergency mass notification system is often the best solution.

When creating a disaster response plan, you’ll likely take the following general steps:

  • Form a disaster recovery team
  • Identify critical functions and potential disaster risks
  • Design and implement a disaster recovery plan
  • Create backup procedures (in case of cyber attack)
  • Train personnel
  • Regularly test and maintain the plan

When preparing your disaster recovery plan, key proactive steps include conducting a business impact analysis and figuring out how you’ll restore data, critical applications and business operations after you’ve been hit with a disaster or emergency.

4. Processes and Actions

Once you’ve created business continuity and disaster recovery plans, the actions taken to implement each plan will differ.

If your organization is faced with a threat to business continuity, your continuity planning team will take actions appropriate for the specific scenario. In the event of a hurricane, for example, those actions might include:

  • Alerting all stakeholders to the threat
  • Advising employees on emergency procedures and points of contact
  • Transitioning to alternative operations, whether that’s a backup workspace or remote work
  • Maintaining internal network infrastructure
  • Checking in with all employees to ensure safety and administer assistance, if necessary
  • Adjusting supply chains if vendors or partners have been affected
  • Communicating any changes with customers and other stakeholders

Once a crisis has subsided, actions taken toward disaster recovery will include any steps necessary to return to normal. In the case of a hurricane, those actions might include:

  • Assisting any employees who have been directly affected by the storm
  • Rebuilding or restoring any damaged company property
  • Restoring or recovering any lost data or company systems
  • Welcoming employees back into the workplace once it’s safe
  • Bringing production levels back up to normal

Processes and actions taken to maintain business continuity and ensure disaster recovery will depend on the specific crisis, which is why it’s important to consider a variety of scenarios when forming your organizational plans.

5. Stakeholders Involved

The stakeholders involved in business continuity and disaster recovery will overlap substantially, but there are slight differences.

The primary stakeholders involved with business continuity include the business continuity planning team, employees, customers, vendors and partners. Key stakeholders involved in disaster recovery include the disaster recovery team, customers, employees, and critical vendors and partners.

The well-being of stakeholders should be the top priority whenever an organization is faced with a crisis.

The Importance of Communications in Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Although there are differences between business continuity and disaster recovery, one of the overall keys to success for both strategies is the emphasis on effective communications. Your teams should have a plan in place for sharing relevant information with your stakeholders throughout a crisis. Timeliness is critical in any critical event. You’ll want to make sure you can quickly send and receive important information. Using a platform built for these types of scenarios can make it easier for your organization to send alerts and notifications.

Business continuity is a strategy for maintaining critical business functions in the face of crisis, and disaster recovery is a key factor in restoring those business functions to full strength. Your organization’s continuity plan should include a disaster recovery plan, and the various team members in charge of each aspect of both plans must work together and be on the same page before, during and after a crisis.

To learn more about how to improve your business continuity and disaster recovery plans, check out our ebook, 4 Misconceptions of Business Continuity Communications (and How to Fix Them) .

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Published: 21 December 2023 Contributors: Mesh Flinders, Ian Smalley

Business continuity disaster recovery (BCDR) refers to a process that helps organizations return to normal business operations in the event of a disaster. While the terms business continuity and  disaster recovery  are closely related, they describe two subtly different approaches to crisis management that businesses can take.

As data loss prevention and downtime become more and more expensive, many organizations are upping their investment in emergency management. In 2023, companies worldwide are poised to spend USD 219 billion on cybersecurity and solutions, a 12% increase from last year  according to a recent report by the International Data Corporation (IDC)  (link resides outside ibm.com).

What is a disaster recovery plan?

A  disaster recovery plan (DRP)  is a contingency plan for how an enterprise will recover from an unexpected event. Alongside business continuity plans (BCPs), DR plans help businesses navigate different disaster scenarios, such as massive outages, natural disasters,  ransomware  and  malware  attacks, and many others.

What is a business continuity plan?

Like DRPs, business continuity plans (BCPs) play a critical role in disaster recovery, helping organizations return to normal business functions in the event of a disaster. Where a DRP focusses specifically on IT systems, business continuity management focusses more broadly on various aspects of preparedness.

Be better prepared for breaches by understanding their causes and the factors that increase or reduce costs. Explore the comprehensive findings from the Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023.

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Most organizations divide BCDR planning into two separate processes: business continuity and disaster recovery. This is an effective approach because while the two processes share many steps, there are also key differences in how the plans are built, implemented and tested.

The primary difference is that BCPs tend to be proactive, while DRPs tend to be more reactive. It’s good to keep this in mind when building the two parts of your BCDR plan because it governs how the two processes relate to each other. A strong business continuity strategy focuses on processes, procedures and roles that are critical to business operations before, during and immediately following a disaster. DR planning is more geared towards reacting to an incident and taking appropriate actions to recover from it. 

Both processes depend heavily on two critical components, recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO):

  • Recovery time objective (RTO):  RTO refers to the amount of time it takes to restore business processes after an unplanned incident. Establishing a reasonable RTO is one of the first things businesses need do when they’re creating their DRP. 
  • Recovery point objective (RPO):  Your business’ RPO is the amount of data it can afford to lose in a disaster and still recover. Since data protection is a core capability of many modern enterprises, some constantly copy data to a remote  data center  to ensure continuity in case of a massive breach. Others set a tolerable RPO of a few minutes (or even hours) for business data to be recovered from a backup system and know they will be able to recover from whatever was lost during that time.

1.    Conduct business impact analysis (BIA)

To build an effective BCP, you’ll first need to understand the various risks your organization faces. Business impact analysis (BIA) plays a crucial role in risk management and business resilience. BIA is the process of identifying and evaluating the potential impact of a disaster on normal operations. Strong BIA includes an overview of all potential existing threats and vulnerabilities—internal and external—as well as detailed plans for mitigation. Additionally, the BIA must identify the likelihood of an event occurring so the organization can prioritize accordingly.

2.    Design responses

Once your BIA is complete, the next step in building your BCP is planning effective responses to each of the threats you’ve identified. Different threats will naturally require different disaster recovery strategies, so each of your responses should have a detailed plan for how the organization will spot a specific threat and address it.

3.    Identify key roles and responsibilities

This step dictates how key members of your team will respond when facing a crisis or disruptive event. It documents expectations for each team member as well as the resources required for them to fulfill their roles. This is a good part of the process to consider how individuals will communicate in the event of an incident. Some threats will shut down key networks—such as cellular or internet connectivity—so it’s important to have fallback methods of communication your employees can rely on.

4.    Test and update your plan

To be actionable, you need to constantly practice and refine your BCDR plan. Constant testing and training of employees will lead to a seamless deployment when an actual disaster strikes. Rehearse realistic scenarios like cyberattacks, fires, floods, human error, massive outages and other relevant threats so team members can build confidence in their roles and responsibilities.

Like BCPs, DRPs require business impact analysis (BIA)—the outlining of roles and responsibilities and constant testing and refinement. But because DRPs are more reactive in nature, there is more of a focus on risk analysis and  data backup and recovery . Steps 2 and 3 of DRP development, performing risk analysis (RA) and creating an asset inventory are not part of the BCP development process at all. 

Here's a widely used five-step process for creating a DRP:

1.    Conduct business impact analysis

Like in your BCP process, start by assessing each threat your company could face and what its ramifications might be. Consider how potential threats might impact daily operations, regular communication channels and worker safety. Additional considerations for a strong BIA include loss of revenue, cost of downtime, cost of reputational repair (public relations), loss of customers and investors (short and long term) and any incurred penalties from compliance violations.

2.    Analyze risks

DRPs typically require more careful risk assessment than BCPs since their role is to focus on recovery efforts from a potential disaster. During the risk analysis (RA) portion of planning, consider a risk’s likelihood and potential impact on your business.

3.    Create an asset inventory

To create an effective DRP, you must know exactly what your enterprise owns, its purpose/function and its condition. Doing regular asset inventory helps identify hardware, software, IT infrastructure and anything else your organization might own that is crucial to your business operations. Once you’ve identified your assets, you can group them into three categories— critical, important  and  unimportant:

  • Critical:  Only label assets as critical if they are required for normal business operations.
  • Important:  Give this label to assets that are used at least once a day and, if disrupted, would have an impact on business operations (but not shut them down entirely).
  • Unimportant:  These are assets your business uses infrequently that are not essential for normal business operations.

4.    Establish roles and responsibilities

Just like in your BCP development, you’ll need to clearly outline responsibilities and ensure team members have what they need to perform their required duties. Without this crucial step, no one will know how to act during a disaster. Here are some roles and responsibilities to consider when building your DRP:

  • Incident reporter:  Someone who maintains contact information for relevant parties and communicates with business leaders and stakeholders when disruptive events occur.
  • DRP supervisor:  The DRP supervisor ensures team members perform the tasks they’ve been assigned during an incident. 
  • Asset manager:  Someone whose job it is to secure and protect critical assets when a disaster strikes. 
  • Third-party liaison:  The person who coordinates with any third-party vendors or service providers you’ve hired as part of your DRP and updates stakeholders accordingly on how the DRP is going.

5.    Test and refine

Like your BCP, your DRP requires constant practice and refinement to be effective. Practice it regularly and update it according to any meaningful changes that need to be made. For example, if your company acquires a new asset after your DRP has been formed, you’ll need to incorporate it into your plan to ensure it's protected going forward.

When it comes to BCDR planning, every business is going to have its own unique set of needs. Here are a few examples of plans that have proven effective for companies of differing sizes and industries:

  • Crisis management plan:  A crisis management plan, also known as an incident management plan, is a detailed plan for managing a specific incident. It provides detailed instructions on how your organization will respond to a specific kind of crisis, such as a power outage, cyberattack or natural disaster.
  • Communications plan:  A communications plan outlines how your organization will handle public relations (PR) in the event of a disaster. Business leaders typically coordinate with communications specialists to formulate communications plans that complement any crisis management activities needed to keep business operations going during an unplanned incident.
  • Data center recovery plan : A data center recovery plan focuses on the security of a data center facility and its ability to get back up and running after an unplanned incident. Some common threats to data storage include overstretched personnel that can result in human error, cyberattacks, power outages and difficulty following compliance requirements. 
  • Network recovery plan:  Network recovery plans help organizations recover from an interruption of network services, including internet access, cellular data, local area networks (LAN) and wide area networks (WAN). Given the importance of many networked services to business operations, network recovery plans must clearly outline the steps, roles and responsibilities needed to restore services quickly and effectively when a network has been compromised.
  • Virtualized recovery plan:  A virtualized recovery plan  relies on virtual machine (VM) instances that can be ready to operate within a couple of minutes of an interruption. Virtual machines are representations, or emulations, of physical computers that provide critical application recovery through high availability (HA), or the ability of a system to operate continuously without failing.

BCDR planning helps organizations better understand the threats they face and better prepare to face them. Enterprises that don’t undertake BCDR planning face a variety of risks, including data loss, downtime, financial penalties and reputational damage. Effective BCDR planning helps ensure business continuity and the prompt restoration of services in the event of a business disruption. Here are some of the benefits companies with strong BCDR planning enjoy:

When an unplanned incident disrupts business as usual, it can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Additionally, high-profile cyberattacks frequently attract unwanted attention in the press and can result in loss of confidence in both customers and investors. BCDR plans increase an organization’s ability get back up and running swiftly and smoothly after an unplanned incident.

According to  IBM’s recent Cost of Data Breach Report , the average cost of a data breach in 2023 was USD 4.45 million, a 15% increase over the last 3 years. Enterprises with strong BCDR can reduce those costs by helping maintain business continuity throughout an incident and speeding recovery afterwards. Another opportunity for cost-savings with strong BCDR is in cyber insurance. Many insurers simply won’t ensure organizations that don’t have a strong BCDR plan in place.

Data breaches incur hefty fines when private customer information is compromised. Businesses that operate in heavily regulated sectors like healthcare and personal finance face especially costly penalties. Since these penalties are often tied to the duration and severity of a breach, maintaining business continuity and shortening response and recovery lifecycles is critical to keeping financial penalties low.

Even a minor outage can put you at a competitive disadvantage. Protect your data with a cloud disaster recovery plan. 

Employ a highly durable, scalable, and security-rich destination for backing up your data.

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Learn about what factors come into play when deciding whether to invest in and manage your on-premises Disaster Recovery (DR) solutions or use Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) providers.

Learn about technologies and practices for making periodic copies of data and applications, that enable your business to recover in case of a power outage, cyberattack, human error, disaster, or some other unplanned event.

Discover critical similarities and differences between disaster recovery and backup, as well as how these solutions can help you solve your business' most important problems.

Learn about IBM's plans and processes tot help sustain its business by assessing and preparing for potential disasters.

Find out how Zerto helps clients access robust disaster recovery and data protection capabilities while leveraging the agility and flexibility of IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions shared in a single-click deployment.

Learn about immutable storage, a kind of storage protocol that protects stored data by preventing any changes or alterations for either a set or indefinite amount of time.

The demand for increasingly scalable, capable, and affordable backup and recovery solutions has never been greater. Talk to an IBM representative about how IBM Cloud Solutions can help support your priorities and budget.

Risk Publishing

Difference Between Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan

February 14, 2024

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A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) are both critical components of an organization’s overall risk management strategy , but they serve different purposes and focus on different aspects of recovery after a disruption.

Business Continuity Plan (BCP) :

  • Purpose : Ensures that an organization’s essential functions can continue during and after a disaster.
  • Scope : Broad, covering all critical business functions and operations across the organization.
  • Focus : Maintains the continuity of business operations and minimizes downtime.
  • Strategies : Includes plans for work relocation, alternative communication channels, and interim resources.
  • Timeframe : Concerned with keeping the business running during the disruption and immediately afterward.

For instance, a BCP would outline how a business can continue to operate if their main office is inaccessible, which may involve setting up a temporary office or enabling employees to work from home.

warehouse business continuity plan

Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) :

  • Purpose : Focuses specifically on restoring IT systems and data access after a disaster.
  • Scope : Narrower, concentrating on IT infrastructure, data, and assets.
  • Focus : Recovery of IT operations, data, and systems to resume business processes.
  • Strategies : Includes data backups, server and network restoration, and IT infrastructure repair.
  • Timeframe : Concerned with the technical recovery efforts immediately after an incident.

For example, a DRP would detail the steps to be taken to recover data from backups, restore server operations, and re-establish network connectivity after a system failure.

While they have distinct roles, BCP and DRP should be developed in coordination with each other to ensure a comprehensive approach to organizational resilience .

Both plans are essential for reducing the negative impacts of disruptions and for quick recovery.

In today’s fast-paced and unpredictable business landscape, organizations must be prepared to face potential disruptions and ensure their survival.

This is where business continuity plans (BCPs) and disaster recovery plans (DRPs) come into play.

While they may seem similar at first glance, these two strategies serve different purposes and have distinct objectives.

Understanding the fine line between BCPs and DRPs is crucial for any organization aiming to safeguard its operations and minimize downtime in the face of adversity.

So, let’s explore the key differences between these plans and discover how they contribute to a resilient business environment .

Key Takeaways

  • BCPs focus on ensuring the continuity of critical business processes , while DRPs focus on IT systems and infrastructure recovery.
  • BCPs maintain business operations during and after incidents, while DRPs deal with IT systems and data recovery.
  • BCPs have a broader reach beyond disaster recovery to the entire business, while DRPs focus solely on critical systems recovery.
  • BCPs and DRPs require regular testing, updates, and maintenance to ensure ongoing effectiveness.

Objectives of BCPs and DRPs

When implementing a Business Continuity Plan (BCP), the objectives are to ensure the organization can continue essential operations during and after a disruptive event, minimize downtime, and protect critical assets.

On the other hand, Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs) focus on restoring IT infrastructure and systems after a disaster, aiming to minimize data loss, restore services, and resume operations as quickly as possible.

While both BCPs and DRPs share the ultimate goal of maintaining business operations, their specific objectives and approaches differ significantly.

BCP Objectives Explained

BCP Objectives can be defined as the specific goals and aims that business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans aim to achieve in order to ensure the resilience and continuity of a business in the face of unforeseen disruptions or disasters.

These objectives include:

  • Protecting critical operations and minimizing downtime.
  • Establishing recovery time objectives (RTO) to determine the maximum acceptable downtime.
  • Setting recovery point objectives (RPO) to determine the maximum acceptable data loss.
  • Developing effective recovery strategies and processes to ensure prompt and efficient recovery.

DRP Objectives Outlined

To ensure the resilience and continuity of a business in the face of unforeseen disruptions or disasters, disaster recovery plans (DRPs) have specific objectives that aim to protect critical operations and enable prompt and efficient recovery.

DRPs focus on minimizing the impact of a disruptive event and restoring normal operations as quickly as possible.

These objectives include identifying critical business functions, assessing risks and threats, developing recovery strategies, and ensuring employee safety during a disruption.

Similarities and Differences

The objectives of business continuity plans (BCPs) and disaster recovery plans (DRPs) highlight both similarities and differences in their approach to ensuring the resilience and recovery of a business .

While both plans aim to protect critical business operations and minimize the impact of events such as natural disasters or incidents, BCPs focus on proactive measures like risk assessment and business impact analysis .

On the other hand, DRPs concentrate on reactive strategies for quick recovery and restoration of operations.

Scope of BCPs and DRPs

The scope of business continuity plans (BCPs) and disaster recovery plans (DRPs) is a crucial aspect to consider when developing an effective strategy.

BCPs aim to ensure the continuity of critical business processes , including the people, systems, and facilities required to maintain operations during a disruption.

On the other hand, DRPs focus specifically on the recovery of IT systems and infrastructure after a disaster.

Understanding the coverage of BCPs and DRPs is essential to determine the extent to which an organization can respond and recover from different types of disruptions.

business continuity plan

BCP and DRP Scope

BCPs and DRPs have defined scopes that outline the specific areas and processes they govern in a business’s continuity and disaster recovery efforts .

The scope of a business continuity plan includes functions related to emergencies, normal business operations, and critical business processes.

On the other hand, the scope of a disaster recovery plan focuses on the recovery process, incident response, and communication between emergency staff.

These scopes ensure that both plans address the necessary aspects of continuity and recovery in a systematic and organized manner.

Coverage of BCPs and DRPs

Coverage of Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) and Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs) encompasses the range of activities and processes that these plans address to ensure the continuity and recovery of a business in the event of an emergency or disaster.

BCPs focus on maintaining business operations during and after an incident, while DRPs specifically deal with the recovery of IT systems and data.

The table below highlights the key differences between BCPs and DRPs:

BCP Vs. DRP Reach

To further understand the difference between Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) and Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs), it is important to examine the reach or scope of these plans.

The reach of a BCP extends beyond just recovery from potential disasters . It encompasses the entire business, including critical systems, recovery steps, and communication with recovery personnel.

On the other hand, a DRP focuses solely on the recovery of critical systems . Recovery testing is crucial for both plans to ensure their effectiveness.

Implementation Strategies for BCPs and DRPs

When it comes to implementing Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) and Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs), organizations need to follow a well-defined planning process.

This process includes identifying critical processes, resources, and dependencies, as well as establishing clear roles and responsibilities.

Additionally, key components of BCPs and DRPs, such as backup and recovery strategies, communication plans, and alternative work arrangements, must be carefully considered.

Business Continuity Plan

Lastly, the importance of testing BCPs and DRPs cannot be overstated, as it ensures their effectiveness and identifies any gaps or areas for improvement.

Planning Process for BCPs and DRPs

Implementing effective business continuity plans (BCPs) and disaster recovery plans (DRPs) requires a meticulous planning process that ensures the resilience and recovery of critical business functions in the face of potential disruptions.

This planning process involves the following steps:

  • Assessing risks and vulnerabilities to identify potential threats and impacts.
  • Developing a detailed plan that outlines the actions to be taken in the event of a disruption.
  • Assigning responsibilities to key personnel to ensure effective execution.
  • Regularly testing and updating the plans to adapt to changing circumstances.

Key Components of BCPs and DRPs

Effective implementation strategies for business continuity plans (BCPs) and disaster recovery plans (DRPs) require careful consideration of key components that ensure the resilience and recovery of critical business functions.

These components include:

  • The identification and allocation of necessary resources.
  • The creation and documentation of comprehensive BCP and DRP documents.
  • The utilization of cloud technologies for data storage and accessibility.
  • The development of a robust business continuity strategy .
  • The implementation of reliable disaster recovery systems .
  • The establishment of dedicated recovery teams .
  • The integration of effective recovery technologies.

Importance of Testing BCPs and DRPs

Testing business continuity plans (BCPs) and disaster recovery plans (DRPs) is of utmost importance in ensuring their effectiveness and the ability of an organization to swiftly recover from disruptions.

To understand the importance of testing BCPs and DRPs, consider the following:

  • Testing allows organizations to identify any weaknesses or gaps in their plans.
  • It helps validate the accuracy and reliability of the plans in real-world scenarios.
  • Testing enables organizations to train their employees on how to respond during a crisis.
  • Regular testing ensures that BCPs and DRPs are up-to-date and relevant in a constantly evolving business environment .

When it comes to business continuity planning (BCP) and disaster recovery planning (DRP), understanding the key components is essential. BCP focuses on strategies and measures to ensure the continuous operation of critical business functions during and after a disruption, while DRP is concerned with the process of restoring systems, data, and infrastructure after a disaster.

The components of BCPs and DRPs include:

  • Risk assessment.
  • Business impact analysis.
  • Emergency response plans.
  • Backup and recovery procedures.
  • Testing and training protocols.

BCP Vs DRP: Comparison

A comprehensive understanding of the key components of Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) and Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs) is essential in differentiating between the two and effectively implementing them for organizational resilience. Here are the key aspects that differentiate BCPs and DRPs:

  • Scenarios : BCPs focus on planning for potential disruptions, while DRPs focus on recovery efforts after a disaster.
  • Documentation : BCPs include recovery documentation, while DRPs focus on recovery procedures.
  • Critical Functions : BCPs identify critical functions and prioritize their recovery, while DRPs focus on restoring IT infrastructure.
  • Emergency Contact : BCPs include emergency contact information, while DRPs focus on technical support and recovery teams.

BCP and DRP Components

To effectively implement Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) and Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs), it is important to understand the key components that make up these plans. Rapid recovery from potential disaster risks requires a comprehensive approach.

Key components include:

  • Employee contact information.
  • Protocols for initial emergency response.
  • Power outage and hardware failure mitigation strategies.
  • Virtual machine deployment.
  • Non-IT recovery protocols.
  • Identification of crucial business functions.

Additionally, disaster recovery personnel should be assigned to ensure efficient execution of the plans.

Differences in Testing and Maintenance of BCPs and DRPs

When it comes to testing and maintenance, there are distinct differences between Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) and Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs). BCPs typically undergo regular testing through various methods such as tabletop exercises and simulations to ensure the effectiveness of the plan.

On the other hand, DRPs often focus more on the maintenance aspect, ensuring that the infrastructure, systems, and data backups are regularly updated and available for recovery in the event of a disaster.

Both testing and maintenance play critical roles in ensuring the resilience and readiness of organizations in the face of potential disruptions.

Testing Methods

In order to ensure the effectiveness and reliability of Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) and Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs), organizations must employ distinct testing methods and maintenance strategies. These testing methods include:

  • Disaster recovery testing : Evaluating the ability of the DRP to recover systems and operations within the defined recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO).
  • Business continuity testing : Assessing the effectiveness of BCPs in enabling the organization to continue essential functions during a disruption.
  • Testing frequency : Establishing how often testing should be conducted to ensure ongoing readiness.
  • Testing scope and scenarios : Determining the scope of testing and the scenarios to be simulated, ensuring comprehensive coverage.

Maintenance Practices

Organizations must adopt distinct maintenance practices for Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) and Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs) to ensure their ongoing effectiveness and reliability.

BCPs require regular maintenance on a periodic basis to update and validate contingency planning. Critical aspects such as infrastructure failure and lines of communication need to be tested.

On the other hand, DRPs require regular maintenance to update and test disaster recovery solutions , network recovery plans, and cyber recovery capabilities .

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan be used interchangeably.

A business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan cannot be used interchangeably as they serve different purposes.

A business continuity plan focuses on ensuring the continuation of critical business functions , while a disaster recovery plan focuses on restoring IT systems and data after a disaster.

How Often Should a Business Continuity Plan and a Disaster Recovery Plan Be Reviewed and Updated?

A business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan should be reviewed and updated regularly to ensure their effectiveness in mitigating risks and ensuring the continued operation of critical business functions in the event of disruptions.

What Are the Main Challenges in Implementing a Business Continuity Plan and a Disaster Recovery Plan?

The main challenges in implementing a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan include ensuring stakeholder buy-in, conducting thorough risk assessments , establishing clear communication channels, and regularly testing and updating the plans to address evolving threats and vulnerabilities.

How Can Organizations Ensure the Effectiveness of Their Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan?

Organizations can ensure the effectiveness of their business continuity plan and disaster recovery plan by conducting regular testing and exercises, involving all key stakeholders, and regularly reviewing and updating the plans to address emerging risks and changing business needs.

Are There Any Legal or Regulatory Requirements for Having a Business Continuity Plan and a Disaster Recovery Plan in Place?

Legal and regulatory requirements for having a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan in place vary by industry and jurisdiction.

It is important for organizations to research and comply with relevant laws and regulations to ensure compliance and minimize legal risks.

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In conclusion, business continuity plans (BCPs) and disaster recovery plans (DRPs) are both essential components of an organization’s risk management strategy .

While BCPs focus on ensuring the continued operation of critical business functions during a disruption, DRPs primarily focus on restoring IT infrastructure and systems.

BCPs have a broader scope and involve a wider range of strategies , while DRPs are more narrow in scope and focus on technical recovery.

Regular testing and maintenance are crucial for both BCPs and DRPs to ensure their effectiveness in times of crisis.

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Chris Ekai is a Risk Management expert with over 10 years of experience in the field. He has a Master’s(MSc) degree in Risk Management from University of Portsmouth and is a CPA and Finance professional. He currently works as a Content Manager at Risk Publishing, writing about Enterprise Risk Management, Business Continuity Management and Project Management.

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Incident response vs. disaster recovery vs. business continuity: what’s the difference.

Incident Response vs. Disaster Recovery vs. Business Continuity

In a world getting less predictable every week, good business leaders proactively prepare for cyber incidents with plans that anticipate and minimize disruptions. But as you start looking ahead, it’s easy to get confused about the differences between incident response plans, disaster recovery plans and business continuity plans. In this post, we’ll explain how the plans all weave together into a holistic strategy to protect your business.

Incident Response Plan

The IR plan is the overarching document that gives your team clear guidance on exactly what to do during incidents, data breaches, and other pressure-packed situations when it’s easy to get overwhelmed. If you realize you may be facing a cybersecurity incident, the IR plan will help direct your actions. Every good cybersecurity program puts a high priority on writing and regularly reviewing an IR plan . In many cases, you may be required to have one by industry regulators, your cyber insurance company, key customers who want assurance that you can handle incidents, etc.

Your IR plan will describe your specific:

  • Definition of an incident – A clear checklist helps your team recognize situations serious enough to set the IR plan in motion. The plan also should include criteria for identifying the next stage: an actual disaster that triggers the disaster recovery/business continuity (DR/BC) plan.
  • IR team structure with each person’s responsibilities – This list ensures you have the right voices in the room. It’s easy, for example, to include a lot of IT people and forget to include reps from HR, legal, PR, etc. Be sure to include an executive who can make things happen in a pinch. For each person, clearly describe what they’ll do during an incident.
  • Procedure for reporting incidents – The plan works only if the right people learn about the incident in a timely manner. Clearly explain how team members should report suspected incidents through the right chain of communication.
  • Guidelines for talking to outside parties – When do you tell your customers what happened? Who is allowed to talk to the media if they call? Your plan should anticipate those scenarios and describe what to do.
  • Structure for summarizing lessons learned – Create a method for debriefing the incident, clearly stating what happened and making adjustments as required.

Disaster Recovery

Note that many organizations combine the DR and BC plans into a single document that outlines the processes involved for declaring a disaster, the formulation of the Response Team Members, the processes necessary for a secure recovery, and finally the steps necessary to maintain the continuity of business operations. We’ll explain the differences in the documents here, but rather than fixating on rigid definitions, just make sure you have thorough plans in place.

The DR plan usually centers specifically on data and technology operations with processes for recovering information systems at an alternate facility in response to a major hardware or software failure or destruction of facilities. The DR plan explains, for example, how you can restore lost data, whether that means restoring a single system or an entire data center.

The DR plan will include details such as recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs). These define, respectively, how long you can function without a service and how current the data must be when you restore it. For example, RPOs may tell you that restoring copies of training materials from 48 hours ago isn’t a problem. But if your business runs on current stock market trading data, the RPO will show that you need data to be current within a few minutes.

Business Continuity Plan

The BC plan describes how you’ll maintain operations during and after a significant disruption or an incident. The BC plan should include a triage process for restoring the most essential operations first, such as filling customer orders, making payroll, supporting business partners, etc.

Your BC plan will explain how you can maintain operations in situations such as:

  • Encryption of your data by hackers
  • Loss of power to your facility
  • Failure of a supplier to deliver key materials
  • Natural disasters

The BC plan rests on the foundations of an overall information technology risk assessment and a business impact analysis (BIA). The BIA specifically identifies potential operational implications of various scenarios. What happens to your business if, for example, you lose access to a certain database or cloud-based software? How long could you withstand such an outage without major damage to your business? In a BIA, you’ll seek to put an actual financial cost on various interruptions so that you can make informed investments in prevention and mitigation strategies described in your BC plan.

Essentials for Every Plan

For all three of the plans described in this post, be sure to include these key elements:

  • A designated point of contact (POC) and a leader charged with heading up the effort in a specific area. Many compliance frameworks and private contracts require you to name your POC.
  • A schedule for updating the plan. Many companies are sitting on plans that have never been revised to reflect a remote workforce, reliance on cloud-based services, etc. Commit to an annual review of the plan and update it to reflect the realities of your operations.
  • A schedule for testing the plan . At the simplest level, you should do at least annual tabletop exercises . But you may determine that your situation requires more extensive testing.

For help assessing your specific business risks and making a plan to mitigate them, contact Pratum today.

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Difference Between Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan

• Categorized under Business , Management | Difference Between Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan

The world we live is not so perfect. We live in a world of uncertainties where we often see news about tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other forces of nature creating havoc in their aftermath, destroying homes, devastating cities, and shutting down businesses. These natural disasters not only impact the normal lives of the normal people but also have devastating effects on businesses and organizations around the world. So, as a result, the need to plan for potential disruptions to business operations and technology services has increased exponentially. Businesses have contingencies in place that help prepare them for such events. Business continuity and disaster recovery are comprehensive plans of action that are put into effect when a disaster strikes. These are not prevention of the disaster itself, but prevention of what the organization is otherwise unprepared for.

difference between business continuity plan and disaster recovery

What is Business Continuity Plan?

Business Continuity Plan (BCP), as the name suggests, is a long-term planning that involves creating and validating a plan that outlines how a business continue to operate during an unplanned disruption of services and operations. BCP is a proactive plan of creating a system of prevention and recovery in the face of a disaster, whether a flood, power failure, fire, or cyberattack. It is a plan of action to ensure continuity of business operations before, during and after disasters and disruptive events. BCP is concerned with the activities and processes required to ensure the continuation of critical business operations in an organization to avoid a total loss to the business. It concerns with managing the operational elements within an organization that allow the business to function normally in order to generate revenues. Standards are employed, protocols are established, and recovery systems are created that can lead to immediate mitigating steps.

difference between business continuity plan and disaster recovery

What is Disaster Recovery Plan?

Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is the immediate plan of action that is followed by business continuity operations, and is concerned with the immediate impact of an unplanned event. DRP involves a set of protocols, procedures and policies set by an organization to deal with unplanned incidents such as power outages, natural calamities, and cyberattacks. It is a well-structured, documented approach to deal with specific IT-oriented disruptions such as server outage, power outage, cyberattack, system breach, and so on. Disaster recovery, as the name suggests, involves mitigating the effects of the disaster as quickly as possible and addressing the immediate aftermath. Whereas BCP provides a long-term, strategic approach to ensure continuity of operations, DRP is considered tactical which calls for immediate response to mitigating the impact of a disaster and recovery of critical IT systems. It is a part of business continuity planning and applied to certain aspects of an organization that ensure normal functioning of the IT operations.

Difference between Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan

Approach .

– Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a plan of action to ensure continuity of business operations before, during and after disasters and disruptive events. It provides a long-term, strategic approach to creating and validating a plan to ensure the continuation of critical business operations in an organization. Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is a plan of action that is immediately followed by business continuity operations to mitigate the impact of a disaster and recovery of critical IT systems. Unlike BCP, it takes a more tactical approach to deal with unplanned incidents.

Focus 

– While disaster recovery is considered a subset of business continuity planning, the focus of the BCP and DRP are distinct, with the former attending to the business as a whole while the latter is more focused on information systems. There comes a time, when the two processes overlap. BCP focuses on the operational elements within an organization that allow the business to function normally whereas DRP focuses on certain aspects of an organization that ensure normal functioning of the IT operations. While these two plans have different scopes, they are fundamentally intertwined.

 – Business continuity planning involves a series of procedures and steps to restore normal business operations within an organization when a disaster strikes, with maximum speed and minimal impact on operations. The steps involve risk assessment and management, establishing a planning committee, prioritizing recovery needs, obtaining top management commitment, developing and implementing a plan, testing the plan, test evaluation and the business continuity phase.

The primary purposes of DRP are prevention, continuity and recovery. The steps in DRP involve creating a disaster recovery plan, identifying and assessing disaster risks, identifying mitigating actions, determining Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD), criticality analysis, developing key recovery targets, telecommunication management and utility management, identifying recovery strategies, and finally getting the systems up and running.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan: Comparison Chart

difference between business continuity plan and disaster recovery

While both business continuity and disaster recovery planning are intertwined, their focus are distinct, with the former attending to the business as a whole while the latter is more focused on information systems. The business continuity plan involves multiple specific plans, including the disaster recovery plan. The scopes of both the plans are different, yet the disaster recovery plan is considered a subset of business continuity plan and BCP would be doomed to fail if it is not followed by a tactical plan of action for immediately dealing with disruption of information systems.

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Cite APA 7 Khillar, S. (2021, November 11). Difference Between Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan. Difference Between Similar Terms and Objects. http://www.differencebetween.net/business/difference-between-business-continuity-plan-and-disaster-recovery-plan/. MLA 8 Khillar, Sagar. "Difference Between Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan." Difference Between Similar Terms and Objects, 11 November, 2021, http://www.differencebetween.net/business/difference-between-business-continuity-plan-and-disaster-recovery-plan/.

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Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Strategies

As the head of IT operations for a rapidly expanding e-commerce startup, I'm tasked with ensuring our systems are resilient and prepared for any unforeseen challenges. As we prioritize our business continuity and disaster recovery efforts, I'm keen to gather insights from the community: How frequently do you review and update your business continuity plan and disaster recovery plan? When it comes to storing backups, where do you prefer to store them, and how do you guarantee data integrity and accessibility? What level of downtime for critical processes do you consider acceptable before it translates into unacceptable financial or reputational damage (RTO)? In the event of an outage, what level of data loss is deemed acceptable (RPO)? Could you share your approach to replication, particularly in terms of continuous data copying to a secondary location for expedited recovery?

User: Timetraveler Timetraveler

Popular Topics in Disaster Recovery Planning

Author Taras Schwed

Brand Representative for Object First

Hi, and welcome to the Community!

As a part-time IT consultant, I am dealing with a variety of businesses with entirely different strategies, which is why I will answer the questions based on a company with the most strict strategies out of my entire portfolio.

  • How frequently do you review and update your business continuity plan and disaster recovery plan? 

A quarterly meeting with the IT team and top management is conducted to make sure all the processes regarding business continuity and DR are aligned.

  • When it comes to storing backups, where do you prefer to store them, and how do you guarantee data integrity and accessibility? 

On-premises (ransomware-protected, immutable, zero-trust), off-site (same as on-prem but different offices or ISP colocation), and public cloud are probably what everyone does nowadays. The retention period may vary but the number of copies is an absolute minimum I would say. Automated recovery check jobs and random manual checks.

  • What level of downtime for critical processes do you consider acceptable before it translates into unacceptable financial or reputational damage (RTO)? 

5 minutes for critical processes (retail) and 60 minutes for everything else.

  • In the event of an outage, what level of data loss is deemed acceptable (RPO)? 

1 hour for critical data (finances, customer data) and 1 day for everything else.

  • Could you share your approach to replication, particularly in terms of continuous data copying to a secondary location for expedited recovery?

Everything virtualized, hyper-converged approach within a single location (several hosts, clustering, real-time VM storage replication using Starwind, Storage Spaces Direct, or VMware vSAN depending on hypervisor, hardware, and requirements) plus offsite replication.

Author Adrian Yong

spicehead-885kw wrote: As the head of IT operations for a rapidly expanding e-commerce startup, I'm tasked with ensuring our systems are resilient and prepared for any unforeseen challenges. As we prioritize our business continuity and disaster recovery efforts, I'm keen to gather insights from the community: How frequently do you review and update your business continuity plan and disaster recovery plan? When it comes to storing backups, where do you prefer to store them, and how do you guarantee data integrity and accessibility? What level of downtime for critical processes do you consider acceptable before it translates into unacceptable financial or reputational damage (RTO)? In the event of an outage, what level of data loss is deemed acceptable (RPO)? Could you share your approach to replication, particularly in terms of continuous data copying to a secondary location for expedited recovery?

As a CIO and IT manager (we have 31 subsidiaries), I would say it really depends on the scale of your ecommerce startup and how far you need to scale to....

I have several org that are 100% on the cloud while some are like 70% on the cloud - leverage stateless SAAS offerings like AWS elastic beanstalk with auto-scaling and multi-Availability zone so that you literally can have 110% up time - leverage DB like AWS Aroura that can have up to 6 Availability zones so that DB and applications are almost never down & you do not have to worry about DB replication. AWS also provides Aroura backup services - Leverage on AWS EC2 instances for multi-AZ and autoscaling also

If you are managing most of your servers on-prem....then you really need to know what options for your secondary site, for some can be a 2nd building nearby whereas some would use co-location data centers instead of having server rooms. But the common factor is that all servers need to be VMs on either Hyper-v or VMware as these have the most supporting backup & replication software unless you are using some software defined storage that have replication built in. I would not mention about software defined hypervisors with HA & FT features as that can be a little overwhelming and overpriced. Commonly use Veeam Backup & replication 12.x to - backup VMs (hyper-v or VMware) using Veeam Reverse Incremental backup - use Veeam Backup Copy to copy Backup Data sets from NAS in one location to 2nd - use Veeam Backup & Replication to Replicate VMs using Backup data sets already residing on remote site NAS to remote site hosts * If you have Veeam VUL licenses or the older Veeam Enterprise licenses, you can use surebackup to test backup data sets and/or surereplica to test the replica https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/recovery_verification_surereplica.html?ver=120 Opens a new window

If you need 110% up time, then you will need to look at - Network Load Balancing for web servers  - OS clustering for application servers - DB clustering for databases - at least 2 DCs per network - 2 or more file servers with FRS But these would needed to be supported with - redundant network switches - redundant routers (in HA mode) - UPS and/or power generators - redundant cooling systems - multiple hosts (so the above VMs can sit on different physical servers) - redundant Internet connection with security appliances * now you maybe able to see why AWS and/or SAAS may look like a more feasible option ?

I give simple example of having on-prem Exchange Server and you need it to be having 110% up time.....you need to have redundant setups in case anything within the building may fail. Then you may need to duplicate this setup (or at least 1/2) to the DR or secondary site. But if you have email on SAAS offerings like Exchange Online or G-suite, if they do go down, likely it is a global issue or at least a continental issue & all you have to pay is like $10 or $15 per user per month. The same idea can be applied to your web servers, payment gateways, application servers, ERP solution, Finance solutions, DB, etc

Author Martin Hepworth

Also remember BCP isnt an IT issue, this is a business problem

loss of assets and how you react to them and at what point loosing a building/warehouse etc becomes an issue is for the business to plan

Sure theres a n IT componment but its not everything.

Author F. E.

What most people oversee is the fact that there is no real "ransomware proof" solution or strategy available.

AFAIK all available solutions like immutable backup storage or more generation backups on different media all only reduce the impact, but are no solutions for a perfect protection for a serious attack.

All the backup manufactures will go up the fences for a statement like this. Let me explain what I mean.

The serious attack will be done in at least three or four steps. First, the attacker will try to penetrate your defences silently. For example, a malicious mail with some link that doesn't seem to do anything. In fact, it silently installs some Trojan or backdoor to your systems. If this is successful, it will do anything to remain undetected and starts collecting intel in your systems to get higher privileges and so on. After a while - let's say 6 months - the actual attack begins.

Then the attacker will actually use the intel collected and starts doing his ransomware stuff and probably will install another few backdoors with the newly gained higher privileges. 

Consider what this procedure means to your backups. If the attacker remains undetected until he starts his damaging work, you'll have no backups left which are not infected or not so old that the data in it is pretty useless. And it doesn't matter if they are stored on immutable storage or not - immutable only protects against the alteration of the backup files themselves, and not against what's inside your backups.

So what kind of defence will help beforehand? Not much really - since over 80% of successful attacks start with some kind of user action (clicking the famous link) it's essential to train your users - they are your primary defence line. Every cent invested in this field is a plus in the future. Get yourself a good hardware firewall solution with all the detection options your preferred manufacturer has to offer. This is your second line of defence, so don't be stingy here and invest some money. If it's not included in your firewalls, get some antivirus solution for your endpoints. This could be Microsoft Defender - if it's configured correctly by someone who knows what he is doing. This is the last line of defence - if something slips through everything above, pray that Billy watches over you. Last but not least - get yourself a cyber insurance - a good one. If everything above fails, and you got hacked, you will need some real pros to find the infections in your backups, neutralize them and get your data back in a reasonable amount of time. And since there aren't so many of those people left, who haven't changed sides, they are expensive - really expensive. Good ones start at 10k a day, and you will need a team of them. If you're lucky they'll need a week to fix everything - if it's more complicated it could be 2 or 3 weeks. Do the maths for your own.

So my thinking is, that if you want to be protected against ransomware, you foremost need to empower your users and invest in good hardware and insurance.

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IMAGES

  1. Business Continuity vs Disaster Recovery

    difference between business continuity plan and disaster recovery

  2. Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

    difference between business continuity plan and disaster recovery

  3. Why a Business Continuity Plan is Essential to Disaster Recovery

    difference between business continuity plan and disaster recovery

  4. What is business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR)?

    difference between business continuity plan and disaster recovery

  5. Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity. What’s the Difference?

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  6. Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery

    difference between business continuity plan and disaster recovery

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  2. Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery: 5 Key Differences

    Business continuity focuses on keeping business operational during a disaster, while disaster recovery focuses on restoring data access and IT infrastructure after a disaster.

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    Business continuity focuses on limiting downtime in the case of many different kinds of business disruptions, while disaster recovery focuses on restoring efficient IT system functionality after a serious disaster. All business continuity plans should incorporate some aspects of disaster recovery plans.

  6. Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery: Key Differences

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  7. Disaster recovery plan vs. business continuity plan: Is there a

    Disaster recovery and business continuity are two terms often used interchangeably ' but doing so risks missing some of the key differences between the two strategies. To debunk the disaster recovery plan vs. business continuity plan debate, we look at: What each means; Where the two are similar; How they differ; Why they are often confused

  8. Business Continuity vs Disaster Recovery

    Disaster recovery forms a part of your overall business continuity plan (BCP), a subset of your broader BCP, forming part of the "mitigate" and "recover" portion of your business continuity plan. For example, in business continuity, you have to keep your processes functional during and after the event.

  9. Disaster Recovery vs Business Continuity: 5 Top Differences

    However, there are several differences that organizations should be aware of when it comes to business continuity vs disaster recovery: Essentially, business continuity is a focus on keeping the business operational while a disaster unfolds and in its immediate aftermath. On the other hand, disaster recovery32 is a focus on restoring processes ...

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    Guide Business continuity vs disaster recovery: The difference explained If you're in IT, you've definitely heard business continuity plans (BCP) and disaster recovery plans (DRP) mentioned together. Sometimes, these two are merged into one acronym spelled out as "BCDR".

  11. Business continuity vs. disaster recovery: What's the difference?

    The big picture BC is a methodology that allows organizations to keep their business running in the event of a crisis and return to full functionality when the crisis ends. It's a process of continuous improvement that reflects both internal and external operations, focusing on preserving the functionality of the overall business.

  12. Is a Disaster recovery plan and business continuity plan the same?

    Dale Shulmistra Data Protection Specialist @ Invenio IT People often use the terms disaster recovery and business continuity planning interchangeably, but while these two terms are similar, they describe two different approaches businesses take to bounce back in the event of a disaster.

  13. Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery: What's the Difference

    This can include: Establishing specific roles and plans to handle business continuity tasks. Setting up redundant systems. Creating protocols for internal and external communications. Documenting and communicating the steps employees should take in such situations.

  14. Business Continuity Plan vs. Disaster Recovery Plan

    Sep 01, 2023 A business continuity plan (BCP) and a disaster recovery plan (DRP) are essential components of modern business resilience strategies, ensuring the resilience and survival of organizations in the face of unexpected disruptions.

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    Business Continuity is broad and refers directly to management oversight and planning involved with continuous business function. Unlike Disaster Recovery, which is data-centric, Business Continuity is business-centric. Business Continuity plans are graded by their ability to limit downtime, and in a perfect world, the systems that are put in ...

  17. What's the difference between a disaster recovery plan and a business

    A lot of people use the terms disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) plans interchangeably, but technically there is a difference. A disaster recovery plan is more reactive while a business continuity plan is more proactive. With disaster recovery, your DR plan springs into action when something goes wrong, but you risk information ...

  18. Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery: What Is The Difference?

    How? Well, a major part of business continuity is abiding by a business continuity plan (BCP). This plan typically begins with a business impact analysis (BIA) that identifies the plan's scope and calculates the legal, contractual, and regulatory obligations associated with the disaster.

  19. Business continuity vs. disaster recovery vs. incident response

    Effective business continuity, disaster recovery and incident response strategies all start with identifying and involving the right stakeholders. Clearly define each person's role and responsibilities -- and where those fall on the crisis response timeline -- in the plan itself. Ensure the document includes everyone's current contact information.

  20. Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery: 5 Key Differences and the BC

    Let's review five differences between business continuity and disaster recovery while looking into ways the two are interrelated. 1. Scope. A key difference between business continuity and disaster recovery is business continuity is wider in scope, encompassing all business functions necessary to keep the organization running, regardless of ...

  21. The Differences Between a Business Continuity Plan and a Disaster

    A DR plan is a crucial component of a broader business continuity plan. Disaster recovery refers to the way data and services are restored following an outage incident. In contrast, business continuity refers holistically to the way a business maintains operations during such an incident. As your organization develops these plans, it is ...

  22. What is business continuity disaster recovery?

    How does BCDR work? Most organizations divide BCDR planning into two separate processes: business continuity and disaster recovery. This is an effective approach because while the two processes share many steps, there are also key differences in how the plans are built, implemented and tested.

  23. Difference Between Business Continuity Plan And Disaster Recovery Plan

    A business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan cannot be used interchangeably as they serve different purposes. A business continuity plan focuses on ensuring the continuation of critical business functions, while a disaster recovery plan focuses on restoring IT systems and data after a disaster.

  24. Incident Response vs. Disaster Recovery vs. Business Continuity: What's

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  25. Difference Between Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan

    Focus. - While disaster recovery is considered a subset of business continuity planning, the focus of the BCP and DRP are distinct, with the former attending to the business as a whole while the latter is more focused on information systems. There comes a time, when the two processes overlap. BCP focuses on the operational elements within an ...

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  27. What is the Difference Between RTO and RPO?

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