Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery? Similarities and Differences

Posted by alvina on March 30th, 2018

BCDR or Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery has been considered as a single term as the business and technology expert do not work in isolation but work collaboratively

Business Continuity Vs. Disaster Recovery:

There are certain differences between Business Continuity versus Disaster Recovery which are:

1. Business continuity is a proactive approach that involves the implementation of procedures which would enable the business continue the functions that are critical to its mission, even during a disaster and after it. Its plans to tackle the long-term challenges necessary for organizational success.

After the occurrence of an accident, the organization takes specific steps to make sure that the operations can be resumed smoothly. This is known as disaster recovery.

2. Business continuity involves the whole organization but disaster recovery deals mainly with the technology infrastructure.

3. Disaster recovery forms a part of the larger business continuity planning that mainly deals with the data access after a disaster.

Business continuity also has this component, but it deals with the risk management and other plans which are required for an organization to continue its business uninterruptedly after a disaster.

The similarities between Business continuity and disaster recovery:

Usually, the teams involved in Business continuity and Disaster recovery are same. The similarities between them are:

1. They deal with any kind of unplanned attack that might occur due to human error or natural disaster

2. The goal of both the events to keep the business running normally when a disaster occurs, focusing especially on the applications that are critical to its mission.

Importance of Business Continuity Plan:

Business Continuity Plan is business-centric in nature, that ensures the normalcy of business operations during a disaster. The data can be accessed uninterruptedly, making it a safe place for the employees. It typically involves prevention of downtimes while running the business applications, network connections, online systems, phones, network drives and servers.

The gradation of the Business Continuity Plans is done on the basis of their capability to reduce the downtime and in an ideal case, the systems would never ever go offline during a disaster.

Importance of Disaster Recovery Plan:

This is a data-centric plan that involves the restoration of the IT infrastructure and accessing the data copies that are stored off-site. The best plan has the least recovery time because the normal operations after a disaster depending upon the quick recovery of the business data.

It is impossible for a business to function without disaster recovery. Inspite of being a smaller part of the larger Business Continuity plan, both the strategies need to be employed by an organization to ensure full protection. Disaster Recovery techniques are basically the preventive tools but business continuity strategies are the continuity tools for smoother business operations.