WHY YOU NEED A DISASTER RECOVERY & A BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN
With the horrific conditions people are grappling with, and the consequences yet to unfold in Texas and Louisiana, it brings to mind the all to real risk aspect that all businesses face.
Preparation is key to survival and by focusing on both business continuity and disaster recovery planning, a business can stand a fighting chance at surviving such challenges.
Many people often use the terms disaster recovery and business continuity planning interchangeably, and while these two terms are seemingly alike, they really describe two different approaches businesses should take to bounce back in the event of a disaster.
The difference between a disaster recovery plan and business continuity plan
A business continuity plan is a business strategy, which is designed to be put into place to allow a business to continue operating with minimal disruption in the event of a disaster. Many businesses can not afford to be inoperable for hours let alone days.
A disaster recovery plan is usually much more specific. It’s a plan to recover and restore the data and applications that run your business should your data center, servers or other infrastructure get damaged or destroyed.
Why Both Are Vital
Businesses face a wide variety of threats. These could result from natural disasters like fires, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes or hurricanes.
There are also man-made threats like industrial sabotage, workplace violence or cyber-attacks.
Without both a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan in place, businesses can face some dire consequences.
The sobering fact is that almost half of all businesses that experience a major disaster “never return to the marketplace.”
Business Continuity Planning
A business continuity plan is a broad plan to keep a business up and running in the event of a disaster. It focuses on the business as a whole. With business continuity planning, you’re focusing on the things the business needs up and running first to conduct regular business. If the plan is followed correctly, businesses should be able to continue to provide services to customers during or immediately after a disaster with minimal disruption. The plan also focuses on the needs of business partners and vendors.
A business continuity plan is a written recorded document that lists the business’ essential functions. This include things like a list of critical supplies, employee contact information, a list of crucial business functions and copies of important records.
The business continuity plan includes all the necessary information to get the business up and running as soon as possible.
Disaster Recovery Planning
A disaster recovery plan has now become a focused, specific part of the business continuity plan.
A disaster recovery plan is designed to save “data with the sole purpose of being able to recover it in the event of a disaster.”
That’s why disaster recovery planning is usually focused primarily on the needs of the IT department. The theory being the IT department(or Service Provider) needs to get the data and critical business systems functioning again to support"normal business".
Depending on the type of disaster, the plan could involve everything from recovering a small data set to the loss of an entire data center. Since many businesses are increasingly reliant on information technology, the disaster recovery plan is an important part of business continuity planning.
One of the key strategies in disaster recovery planning is to keep your data backed up at a secondary site. (mirroring) This way, if a disaster occurs at the primary site, a backup of all vital data is available. This can be in the cloud, another data center, or through a third party.
Done appropriately, a good disaster recovery plan will allow you to access data from the secondary site quickly.
Obviously, if a disaster occurs at the primary site, you will not have access to your data until it can be recovered from the secondary site. The quality of your disaster recovery plan is “dependent on the planning, infrastructure and processes that are set forth and tested.”
Let's all help the countless people and businesses affected by Harvey, and let's pay attention to the stark reality we all face that disaster can strike us all at any time.