What is the difference between business continuity and disaster recovery

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. This includes setting up preventative controls and managing employees and customers. 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.

BC planning must include all factors that are involved in normal business operations. Your response strategy must account for the following three key factors:. 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. Take control of your message and have a plan in place for responding on social. Workforce response is equally important in the event of a crisis. Your organization must be able to maintain communication with all stakeholders before, during, and following a crisis, and an emergency mass notification system is often the best solution.

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:. 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:. 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.

Most of the time, business continuity risks are manageable. 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. 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:.

Lucy has more than 23 years of experience in the technology industry. The Futuristic Office: A technical evolution of the…. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We assume you are OK with this, but you wish, you can opt-out. Accept Read More.

What is the difference between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery? What is Disaster Recovery? How do they work together — Where Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery overlap Your business continuity plan provides the necessary steps for your business to respond and recover from an unforeseen incident or event. Business Continuity vs Disaster Recovery — Does your business need one, or both? Business Continuity: Risk management Most of the time, business continuity risks are manageable.

Business Continuity Planning: Risk assessment It is similar to other risk identification processes , and you need to understand the IT infrastructure. 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? Even though Sage has not disclosed if that number has increased in the last years, it is safe to say that it is a trusted and reliable accounting program.

Sage is an excellent choice for medium-sized companies that are projecting exponential growth over the coming […]. Are you on the fence about using cloud hosting this year? Here are eight benefits of cloud services […]. What is a Business Continuity Plan? What is a Disaster Recovery Plan? Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery Organisations face a wide range of threats that could disrupt their normal operations or even decimate them completely. Bottom Line A business continuity plan is the first line of defence for an organisation against disaster.

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