The Difference Between Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Businesses are fragile things. They can be affected in their success by a whole host of factors including market forces, consumer habits, and changes in attitudes.

But many aspects of your business success are firmly held in your own hands. You can develop an agile approach allowing you to change your model based on market forces, you can adapt your products or services to take into account consumer demands, and you can keep track of people's opinions to ensure you keep with current thinking and attitudes.

But how would you cope with a major incident that occurred to or in your business?

Business continuity and disaster recovery are essential tools designed to protect your business should the worst happen.

If you make use of technology in your business, and particularly if it forms the backbone of your operations, you need to make sure you have a Disaster Recovery Plan.

Disaster Recovery is the process of recovering your technical systems, data and applications to a level which allows you to continue operating your business.

Sometimes a DR solution will only recover key systems - just enough to keep you going in the short term until a full recovery can be performed.

A technical disaster or incident can be caused by a number of internal factors including technical faults, accidental damage caused by errors, or malicious activity.

Disasters can also be caused by external factors such as power cuts, floods or property damage.

The key to an effective DR plan is to evaluate which systems, applications and data are key to your operations and ensuring these are recovered first. There is no point spending time and effort recovering your marketing database when your customers aren't getting the products they've ordered or the services they've bought.

Getting your DR plan right can mean the difference between having a business in serious trouble and your customers not even knowing there was a problem.

A Business Continuity Plan is similar in many ways to a Disaster Recovery Plan. The main difference is that the BCP deals with more than just technology.

Your BCP covers all aspects of your business, from offices and desk space, communications, and operations, to incident response, staff safety and public relations.

Whether you decide your business needs a full BCP or merely a DRP you should be aware that having one and making sure it is up to date and tested can be the difference between your business surviving and growing and it's complete failure.

There are many statistics out there about business survival following an incident, but the general consensus is that businesses experiencing a major incident and who don't have an effective BCP will go out of business within 6-24 months of the incident.

You have insurance to cover you should the worst happen. A Business Continuity Plan or at the least a Disaster Recovery Plan should help protect you in the same way - by ensuring your business survives whatever is thrown at it!