What is the difference between business continuity and disaster recovery?

Posted By on November 21st, 2018

As we’ve said before, disaster can strike at any time. And it is always unexpected. This is what can make it so devastating to your business. Being prepared and having plans in place for how to act if you do suffer a disaster are vital to your business survival.

Two key areas to look at include business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning. But aren’t the two the same we hear many businesses ask?

The short answer is no – there are some fundamental differences between the two and you will typically need to have both in place to effectively plan for what to do in the event of a disaster.

Business continuity plans

These set out the processes and procedures that will be undertaken if disaster strikes. A business continuity plan will look at the whole business and what needs to be done to get all areas functional again following a disaster. This can include areas from where your staff would be housed if something were to happen to your office block, how you would communicate this to your staff, to how to get your customer service representatives back up and running and dealing with customer queries.

Disaster recovery plans

Often described as more technical, disaster recovery plans should enable you to get your business-critical systems re-established as quickly as possible. Although not limited to, disaster recovery plans usually focus on IT systems. This is due to the fact that they are so essential in all businesses enabling the running of areas such as websites, customer service systems, and the storage of and access to company data.

However, getting an IT system back up and running isn’t enough alone. You then need the business functions and people responsible for those functions to be able to work from there. This is why it is so important to have both a disaster recovery plan and a business continuity plan given the way that they interact with one another.

With both business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans, make sure you keep these key principals in mind:

Have someone in charge – ideally have a designated team or individual in charge of recording and updating the plans, this will ensure accountability and responsibility.

Carry out a risk assessment – this will help you identify your weak points as well as identify the critical business functions required to continue running the business.

Test your plans – this will help identify any flaws as well as making sure key members of your teams are aware of what to do in the event of a disaster.