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If a disaster strikes, a disruption in normal business operations can have a vast web of consequences. This is why businesses need a comprehensive emergency management plan, which means formulating a blueprint for business continuity and disaster recovery.
Consider the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack of 2021. Although the $4.4 million dollar ransom was quickly paid to the hackers of the major American oil pipeline system, it took just hours for the consequences to become an emergency. Gas shortages plagued the Southeast U.S., flights were canceled, and President Biden declared a state of emergency two days after the attack occurred.
While this critical event is a stand-out example of a worst-case disaster scenario, any disruptive event that threatens a business’ critical functions can have cascading consequences.
Table of Contents
Business Continuity vs Disaster Recovery – What’s the Difference
What a Business Continuity Plan Includes
Why Business Continuity Plans and Disaster Recovery Plans are Crucial
How to Build a Strong Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan
Steps of Building a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan
Business Continuity Plans and Disaster Recovery Plans
DartPoints Can Help Ensure Your Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan is Effective
All About Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan
A business continuity and disaster recovery plan is more than just having a rough outline of protecting critical data and critical business functions during an emergency. Instead, it’s a complex and detailed crisis management guide that targets both proactive strategies and all aspects of an organization’s ability to retain critical processes and return to normal business functions as soon as possible.
A complete business continuity and disaster recovery plan, therefore, has multiple moving parts that can include:
- data loss prevention
- data recovery
- protection of IT infrastructure,
- the continuation of essential operations,
- and a communications plan for personnel, business leaders, and business partners.
A solid plan considers how critical operations and more routine business functions will be affected by different disaster scenarios, such as a cyberattack, natural disaster, or even power outages. It also includes a risk assessment and contingency plans if a specific type of disaster occurs.
An expert in business continuity and disaster recovery like DartPoints can be an invaluable resource for business leaders when crafting a concrete plan. Our expert team can ensure there are no gaps in disaster recovery and optimally maintain operations if a disaster strikes.
In the meantime, however, it’s helpful to know the fundamentals of what a business continuity and disaster recovery plan entails. Therefore, you can get a head start on protecting your IT systems, critical business processes, and data and can return to normal operations as soon as possible while limiting downtime.
Business continuity vs disaster recovery – what’s the difference?
Business continuity and disaster recovery are two terms that are often used interchangeably. However, there are some key differences in the specifics of business continuity and disaster recovery.
The following guide outlines these differences in business continuity vs disaster recovery and what each distinctive type of strategy entails.
Business continuity vs disaster recovery – What a Business Continuity Plan includes
Business continuity focuses on the steps that an organization will take to return to normal business functions after a disaster strikes. A solid business continuity strategy is a broad approach because while other types of disaster plans may focus on one or more distinctive aspects of recovery and prevention (such as after natural disasters or cyberattacks), a typical business continuity plan aims to ensure that an organization can face as many different disasters or potential threats as possible.
Business continuity vs disaster recovery – What a Disaster Recovery Plan includes
Disaster recovery focuses on the details, as disaster recovery involves guidelines for how organizations will protect their IT systems and critical data during a natural disaster or other emergency event. Disaster recovery strategies can vary, but they tend to examine the technical and functional backbones of a company that will allow an organization to continue operations in case of a catastrophic event. This can include safeguarding IT systems and ensuring data protection as proactive measures, as well as steps for data recovery via a backup system and/or other initiatives.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Working Together
Optimally, a business continuity and disaster recovery plan will work hand in hand and will be crafted together via a business continuity management team. While business continuity and disaster recovery plans can be approached separately, there is a trend towards practicing the two disciplines together to ensure all business leaders are on the same page. In today’s age, there is no debate between business continuity vs disaster recovery, but rather, business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans work together to keep a business running.
Why business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans are crucial
Business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans are essential for many reasons. A handful of these far-reaching benefits are as follows:
Shortens downtime
When a disaster interrupts business functioning, it can have an overlapping range of adverse effects. An inability for an organization to remain operational can lead to long-term financial losses, reputational damage, and impacts on customers, vendors, and other third parties. Simply put, the longer it takes for an organization to resume operations, the higher the cost to the business and its partners – both literally and regarding brand reputation and loyalty.
Ensures financial security
As stated, a disaster can have substantial financial impacts which can linger well after an emergency. According to IBM’s Cost of Data Breach Report, the average cost of a data breach was $4.45 million in 2023, which was a 15% increase since 2020. However, organizations with solid business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans can minimize these costs and increase customer and investor/third-party confidence.
Avoids legal or regulatory issues
Data breaches and data loss can result in hefty penalties when private or critical data is leaked, especially for industries that deal with sensitive information on a regular basis. The financial and healthcare sectors are especially vulnerable to potential legal and regulatory fallout when a disaster strikes, and these sectors are heavily targeted by bad actors simply because their stored data is so valuable. As a result, having a strong business continuity and disaster recovery plan isn’t just a good idea for organizations that deal with sensitive data – it is likely required by the state, federal, or other governmental agencies that oversee these industries.
How to build a strong business continuity and disaster recovery plan
There are many strategies when it comes to creating business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans, and building business resilience is often an individualized venture.
For example, a large healthcare organization’s data loss prevention steps will likely be more robust than a smaller retail shop or non-profit organization that does not deal with an astronomical amount of sensitive data.
In addition, the details of a business continuity and disaster recovery plan will depend on various internal and external factors. One organization may be more susceptible to natural disasters due to its geographic location. Therefore, their crisis management details will likely focus on the impacts of natural disasters, like power outages that shut down IT systems and other business processes. Internally, an organization’s distinctive IT systems and IT infrastructure will dictate the steps that need to be taken to prevent data loss, minimize disruptions, and restore data as needed.
With these individualized requirements in mind, a solid business continuity and disaster recovery plan includes the following two objectives:
- Recovery time objective (RTO) – Recovery time objective refers to the amount of time it takes to restore business processes after an emergency or other disaster. Establishing a reasonable Recovery time objective is one of the first things businesses need to do when they are creating a business continuity and/or a disaster recovery plan
- Recovery point objective (RPO) – The recovery point objective (RPO) refers to the amount of lost data that can safely occur without impacting business operations. Since data protection is a core requirement for many organizations, having a data backup system that is constantly updated is crucial.
The first steps of building a business continuity and disaster recovery plan
Step 1 – Start with a business impact analysis
A business impact analysis allows organizations to have a better understanding of the various threats that can impact business operations and how likely it is that these various threats will come to fruition.
Essentially, the purpose of a business impact analysis is twofold. For this reason, identify the probability of a potential threat becoming realized and identify the financial and associated costs if the worst-case scenario occurs.
Step 2 – Create potential responses for each identified threat
Once you have a concrete understanding of the potential threats and their likelihood of occurring, it’s time to find solutions to ensure organizational resilience. Different types of threats – like natural disasters or cyberattacks – will often require varying and multi-pronged responses, so it’s essential to spell out these solutions in far-reaching detail for each potential risk.
Step 3 – Assign roles and responsibilities for your disaster recovery team
When a disaster strikes, everyone in your organization is affected, so it’s important to outline roles and responsibilities ahead of time.
Ensure you have a solid disaster recovery team in place that will do the heavy lifting or partner with a disaster recovery expert like DartPoints. Our team has established methods of communication in place to keep everyone on the same page.
When it comes to business continuity management, communication is the thread that connects all affected parties. Have varying messages for your disaster team members, personnel, business partners or vendors, and customers, and have effective ways to relay these messages that won’t be impacted by power outages or other issues that could potentially shut down your IT systems.
Step 4. Rehearse, revise, and review your disaster recovery plans and business continuity plans
Business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans are not stagnant, one-time creations.
When an organization creates a plan, it’s essentially a first draft, as disaster recovery planning and business continuity planning should be a continual enterprise.
The business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning you conduct now will address risk assessments and disaster recovery steps for the identified threats of the current moment, but what about the future?
To be truly effective, organizations need to take their disaster recovery planning and business continuity planning to the next plateau by doing the following:
- Rehearse – Put your disaster recovery planning into practice by having a few test incidents to ensure that your procedures are effective and result in continual business operations.
- Revise – After your test cases, revise your disaster recovery planning and business continuity planning as needed to fill in any gaps or minimize disruptions and downtime further.
- Review – Create a set schedule for reviewing your disaster recovery plans and business continuity plans and changing your risk assessments and responses as needed. New threats are always emerging, especially when it comes to sophisticated cyberattacks, so disaster recovery planning and business continuity planning should be a constant practice for your business leaders.
The best business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans start with an expert resource
When it comes to creating a comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery plan, the best thing an organization can do is to start with an expert in disaster recovery and backup solutions.
It is completely understandable that most organizations – especially smaller companies without a deep, in-house IT team – may not have the internal resources required to protect all aspects of their IT infrastructure or ensure a fast disaster recovery if multiple IT systems are affected.
However, resuming normal business operations as quickly and efficiently as possible is crucial when it comes to disaster recovery. This can’t be accomplished with minimal resources and/or a small and overworked disaster recovery team.
DartPoints can help ensure your business continuity plan and disaster recovery plan is effective
Extensive disaster recovery and business continuity planning can benefit organizations of all sizes, and an expert in disaster recovery like DartPoints can craft concrete blueprints that will ensure ample protection and minimize disruptions as much as possible.
When it comes to ensuring business operations, don’t wait until after a disaster strikes to seek expert and professional assistance. Instead, start a conversation with the security and disaster recovery experts at DartPoints today to get a proactive head start on business continuity and disaster planning. By taking steps now to protect your organization, you can ensure peace of mind for a successful future for many years ahead.