Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery Planning are not the same thing!
June 15th 2015
The terms business continuity and disaster recovery are often used interchangeably, however they are not the same thing. Getting them mixed up could prove to be very costly for your business in the event of a crisis.
What is disaster recovery (DR) and what does a DR plan include?
Disaster recovery refers to the process of getting the technology that supports your business back up and running after a disaster. It is an important component of any business continuity plan. Disasters are classified in two broad categories, natural disasters such as floods and storms, and man-made disasters such as the failure of your IT infrastructure.
Your disaster recovery (DR) plan will set out the steps that need to be taken to restore applications, data, hardware, networking communications and other IT infrastructure following a disaster. It must establish the business applications that are critical to the business and their Recovery Point (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO). These metrics determine how much data you can afford to lose and how soon you need to have your systems back up and running. The DR plan should also incorporate preventative measures aimed at reducing the probability of an identified risk from occurring, detective measures aimed at detecting or discovering unwanted events, testing procedures and details of key personnel.
What is business continuity (BC) and what does a BC plan include?
Business continuity (BC) refers to maintaining business functions or quickly resuming them in the event of a major disruption, whether caused by a fire, flood, epidemic illness, the departure of a key staff member or a malicious attack across the Internet.
In the event of a disruption, your business continuity (BC) plan outlines the procedures that need to be followed to keep the business running. It covers all non-IT related aspects such as key personnel, facilities, and crisis communication and reputation protection. The BC plan should reference the DR plan for all IT related infrastructure recovery / continuity.
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity in Action
There is a fire in the server room of your office building and the building is inaccessible for 3 days. Your disaster recovery plan will focus on restoring access to your IT systems and data. Your business continuity plan will look at how you will keep the business running. Where will your staff be based? Will they work from home or will they relocate to a temporary facility? How will they communicate with each other? How will you handle customer calls and deliveries from suppliers?
The importance of disaster recovery and business continuity planning
Companies today face an unprecedented number of exposures and managing these risks is key to the survival of any organisation. The only way to ensure that your business mitigates its interruptions is to have a fast recovery and this is only possible if you have a well-designed, tested and maintained business continuity and disaster recovery plans in place.
How can IT Force help you?
From data backup to managed disaster recovery and workplace recovery solutions for business continuity, IT Force delivers a range of services that will help to ensure that your business can continue to operate when faced with a crisis or a disaster.
Read more about our business continuity and disaster recovery solutions or call us on 01 5546 000.