Business continuity and disaster recovery plans are risk management strategies that businesses rely on to prepare for unexpected incidents. While the terms are closely related, there are some key differences worth considering when choosing which is right for you:

  • Business continuity plan (BCP): A BCP is a detailed plan that outlines the steps an organization will take to return to normal business functions in the event of a disaster. Where other types of plans might focus on one specific aspect of recovery and interruption prevention (such as a natural disaster or cyberattack), BCPs take a broad approach and aim to ensure an organization can face as broad a range of threats as possible.
  • Disaster recovery plan (DRP):  More detailed in nature than BCPs, disaster recovery plans consist of contingency plans for how enterprises will specifically protect their IT systems and critical data during an interruption. Alongside BCPs, DR plans help businesses protect data and IT systems from many different disaster scenarios, such as massive outages, natural disasters,  ransomware  and  malware  attacks, and many others.
  • Business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR): Business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) can be approached together or separately depending on business needs. Recently, more and more businesses are moving towards practicing the two disciplines together, asking executives to collaborate on BC and DR practices rather than work in isolation. This has led to combining the two terms into one, BCDR , but the essential meaning of the two practices remains unchanged.

Regardless of how you choose to approach the development of BCDR at your organization, it’s worth noting how quickly the field is growing worldwide. As the results of bad BCDR like data loss and downtime become more and more expensive, many enterprises are adding to their existing investments. Last year, companies worldwide were poised to spend USD 219 billion on cybersecurity and solutions, a 12% increase from the year before according to a recent report by the International Data Corporation (IDC) (link resides outside ibm.com).

Why are business continuity and disaster recovery plans important?

Business continuity plans (BCPs) and disaster recovery plans (DRPs) help organizations prepare for a broad range of unplanned incidents. When deployed effectively, a good DR plan can help stakeholders better understand the risks to regular business functions that a particular threat may pose. Enterprises that don’t invest in business continuity disaster recovery (BCDR) are more likely to experience data loss, downtime, financial penalties and reputational damage due to unplanned incidents.

Here are some of the benefits that businesses who invest in business continuity and disaster recovery plans can expect:

  • Shortened downtime: When a disaster shuts down normal business operations, it can cost enterprises hundreds of millions of dollars to get back up and running again. High-profile  cyberattacks  are particularly damaging, frequently attracting unwanted attention and causing investors and customers to flee to competitors who advertise shorter downtimes. Implementing a strong BCDR plan can shorten your recovery timeframe regardless of the kind of disaster you face.
  • Lower financial risk: According to  IBM’s recent Cost of Data Breach Report, the average cost of a data breach was USD 4.45 million in 2023—a 15% increase since 2020. Enterprises with strong business continuity plans have shown they can reduce those costs significantly by shortening downtimes and increasing customer and investor confidence.
  • Reduced penalties: Data breaches can result in large penalties when private customer information is leaked. Businesses that operate in the healthcare and personal finance space are at a higher risk because of the sensitivity of the data they handle. Having a strong business continuity strategy in place is imperative for businesses that operate in these sectors, helping keep the risk of heavy financial penalties relatively low.

How to build a business continuity disaster recovery plan

Business continuity disaster recovery (BCDR) planning is most effective when businesses take a separate but coordinated approach. While business continuity plans (BCPs) and disaster recovery plans (DRPs) are similar, there are important differences that make developing them separately advantageous:

  • Strong BCPs focus on tactics for keeping normal operations running before, during and immediately following a disaster. 
  • DRPs tend to be more reactive, outlining ways to respond an incident and get everything back up and running smoothly.

Before we dive into how you can build effective BCPs and DRPs, let’s look at a couple of terms that are relevant to both:

  • Recovery time objective (RTO):  RTO refers to the amount of time it takes to restore business processes after an unplanned incident. Establishing a reasonable RTO is one of the first things businesses need to do when they’re creating either a BCP or DRP. 
  • Recovery point objective (RPO):  Your business’ recovery point objective (RPO) is the amount of data it can afford to lose in a disaster and still recover. Since data protection is a core capability of many modern enterprises, some constantly copy data to a remote  data center  to ensure continuity in case of a massive breach. Others set a tolerable RPO of a few minutes (or even hours) for business data to be recovered from a backup system and know they will be able to recover from whatever was lost during that time.

How to build a business continuity plan (BCP) 

While each business will have slightly different requirements when it comes to planning for business continuity, there are four widely used steps that yield strong results regardless of size or industry.

1. Run a business impact analysis 

Business impact analysis (BIA) helps organizations better understand the various threats they face. Strong BIA includes creating robust descriptions of all potential threats and any vulnerabilities they might expose. Also, the BIA estimates the likelihood of each event so the organization can prioritize them accordingly.

2. Create potential responses

For each threat you identify in your BIA, you’ll need to develop a response for your business. Different threats require different strategies, so for each disaster you might face it’s good to create a detailed plan for how you could potentially recover.

3. Assign roles and responsibilities

The next step is to figure out what’s required of everyone on your disaster recovery team in the event of a disaster. This step must document expectations and consider how individuals will communicate during an unplanned incident. Remember, many threats shut down key communication capabilities like cellular and Wi-Fi networks, so it’s wise to have communication fallback procedures you can rely on.

4. Rehearse and revise your plan

For each threat you’ve prepared for, you’ll need to constantly practice and refine BCDR plans until they are operating smoothly. Rehearse as realistic a scenario as you can without putting anyone at actual risk so team members can build confidence and discover how they are likely to perform in the event of an interruption to business continuity.

How to build a disaster recovery plan (DRP)

Like BCPs, DRPs identify key roles and responsibilities and must be constantly tested and refined to be effective. Here is a widely used four-step process for creating DRPs.

1. Run a business impact analysis

Like your BCP, your DRP begins with a careful assessment of each threat your company could face and what its implications could be. Consider the damage each potential threat could cause and the likelihood of it interrupting your daily business operations. Additional considerations could include loss of revenue, downtime, cost of reputational repair (public relations) and loss of customers and investors due to bad press.

2. Inventory your assets

Effective DRPs require you to know exactly what your enterprise owns. Regularly perform these inventories so you can easily identify hardware, software, IT infrastructure and anything else your organization relies on for critical business functions. You can use the following labels to categorize each asset and prioritize its protection—critical, important and unimportant.

  • Critical:  Label assets critical if you depend on them for your normal business operations.
  • Important:  Give this label to anything you use at least once a day and, if disrupted, would impact your critical operations (but not shut them down entirely).
  • Unimportant:  These are the assets your business owns but uses infrequently enough to make them unessential for normal operations.

Like in your BCP, you’ll need to describe responsibilities and ensure your team members have what they need to perform them. Here are some widely used roles and responsibilities to consider:

  • Incident reporter:  Someone who maintains contact information for relevant parties and communicates with business leaders and stakeholders when disruptive events occur.
  • DRP  supervisor:  Someone who ensures team members perform the tasks they’ve been assigned during an incident. 
  • Asset manager:  Someone whose job it is to secure and protect critical assets when a disaster strikes. 

4. Rehearse your plan

Just like with your BCP, you’ll need to constantly practice and update your DRP for it to be effective. Practice regularly and update your documents according to any meaningful changes that need to be made. For example, if your company acquires a new asset after your DRP has been formed, you’ll need to incorporate it into your plan going forward or it won’t be protected when disaster strikes.

Examples of strong business continuity and disaster recovery plans

Whether you need a business continuity plan (BCP), a disaster recovery plan (DRP), or both working together or separately, it can help to look at how other businesses have put plans in place to boost their preparedness. Here are a few examples of plans that have helped businesses with both BC and DR preparation.

  • Crisis management plan:  A good crisis management plan could be part of either business continuity or disaster recovery planning. Crisis management plans are detailed documents that outline how you’ll manage a specific threat. They provide detailed instructions on how an organization will respond to a specific kind of crisis, such as a power outage, cybercrime or natural disaster; specifically, how they’ll deal with the hour-by-hour and minute-by-minute pressures while the event is unfolding. Many of the steps, roles and responsibilities required in business continuity and disaster recovery planning are relevant to good crisis management plans.
  • Communications plan:  Communications plans (or comms plans) equally apply to business continuity and disaster recovery efforts. They outline how your organization will specifically address PR concerns during an unplanned incident. To build a good comms plan, business leaders typically coordinate with communications specialists to formulate their communications plans. Some have specific plans in place for disasters that are deemed both likely and severe , so they know exactly how they’ll respond.
  • Network recovery plan:  Network recovery plans help organizations recover interruptions of network services, including internet access, cellular data, local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs). Network recovery plans are typically broad in scope since they focus on a basic and essential need—communication—and should be considered more on the side of business continuity than disaster recovery. Given the importance of many networked services to business operations, network recovery plans focus on the steps needed to restore services quickly and effectively after an interruption.
  • Data center  recovery plan: A data center recovery plan is more likely to be included in a BCP than a DRP because of its focus on data security and threats to IT infrastructure. Some common threats to data backup include overstretched personnel, cyberattacks, power outages and difficulty following compliance requirements. 
  • Virtualized recovery plan:  Like a data center plan, a virtualized recovery plan is more likely to be part of a BCP than a DRP because of a BCP’s focus on IT and data resources. Virtualized recovery plans rely on  virtual machine (VM)  instances that can swing into operation within a couple of minutes of an interruption. Virtual machines are representations/emulations of physical computers that provide critical application recovery through high availability (HA), or the ability of a system to operate continuously without failing.

Business continuity and disaster recovery solutions 

Even a minor interruption can put your business at risk. IBM has a wide range of contingency plans and disaster recovery solutions to help prepare your business to face a variety of threats including cloud backup and disaster recovery capabilities and security and resiliency services.

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Business continuity planning (bcp), what is business continuity.

In an IT context, business continuity is the capability of your enterprise to stay online and deliver products and services during disruptive events, such as natural disasters, cyberattacks and communication failures.

The core of this concept is the business continuity plan — a defined strategy that includes every facet of your organization and details procedures for maintaining business availability.

Start with a business continuity plan

Business continuity management starts with planning how to maintain your critical functions (e.g., IT, sales and support) during and after a disruption.

A business continuity plan (BCP) should comprise the following element

1. Threat Analysis

The identification of potential disruptions, along with potential damage they can cause to affected resources. Examples include:

2. Role assignment

Every organization needs a well-defined chain of command and substitute plan to deal with absence of staff in a crisis scenario. Employees must be cross-trained on their responsibilities so as to be able to fill in for one another.

Internal departments (e.g., marketing, IT, human resources) should be broken down into teams based on their skills and responsibilities. Team leaders can then assign roles and duties to individuals according to your organization’s threat analysis.

3. Communications

A communications strategy details how information is disseminated immediately following and during a disruptive event, as well as after it has been resolved.

Your strategy should include:

  • Methods of communication (e.g., phone, email, text messages)
  • Established points of contact (e.g., managers, team leaders, human resources) responsible for communicating with employees
  • Means of contacting employee family members, media, government regulators, etc.

From electrical power to communications and data, every critical business component must have an adequate backup plan that includes:

  • Data backups to be stored in different locations. This prevents the destruction of both the original and backup copies at the same time. If necessary, offline copies should be kept as well.
  • Backup power sources, such as generators and inverters that are provisioned to deal with power outages.
  • Backup communications (e.g., mobile phones and text messaging to replace land lines) and backup services (e.g., cloud email services to replace on-premise servers).

Load balancing business continuity

Load balancing  maintains business continuity by distributing incoming requests across multiple backend servers in your data center. This provides redundancy in the event of a server failure, ensuring continuous application uptime.

In contrast to the reactive measures used in failover and  disaster recovery  (described below) load balancing is a preventative measure.  Health monitoring  tracks server availability, ensuring accurate load distribution at all times—including during disruptive events.

Disaster recovery plan (DCP) – Your second line of defense

Even the most carefully thought out business continuity plan is never completely foolproof. Despite your best efforts, some disasters simply cannot be mitigated. A disaster recovery plan (DCP) is a second line of defense that enables you to bounce back from the worst disruptions with minimal damage.

As the name implies, a disaster recovery plan deals with the restoration of operations after a major disruption. It’s defined by two factors: RTO and  RPO .

disaster recovery plan

  • Recovery time objective (RTO)  – The acceptable downtime for critical functions and components, i.e., the maximum time it should take to restore services. A different RTO should be assigned to each of your business components according to their importance (e.g., ten minutes for network servers, an hour for phone systems).
  • Recovery point objective (RPO)  – The point to which your state of operations must be restored following a disruption. In relation to backup data, this is the oldest age and level of staleness it can have. For example, network servers updated hourly should have a maximum RPO of 59 minutes to avoid data loss.

Deciding on specific RTOs and RPOs helps clearly show the technical solutions needed to achieve your recovery goals. In most cases the decision is going to boil down to choosing the right failover solution.

See how Imperva Load Balancer can help you with business continuity planning.

Choosing the right failover solutions

Failover  is the switching between primary and backup systems in the event of failure, outage or downtime. It’s the key component of your disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

A failover system should address both RTO and RPO goals by keeping backup infrastructure and data at the ready. Ideally, your failover solution should seamlessly kick in to insulate end users from any service degradation.

When choosing a solution, the two most important aspects to consider are its technological prowess and its service level agreement (SLA). The latter is often a reflection of the former.

For an IT organization charged with the business continuity of a website or web application, there are three failover options:

  • Hardware solutions  – A separate set of servers, set up and maintained internally, are kept on-premise to come online in the event of failure. However, note that keeping such servers at the same location makes them potentially susceptible to being taken down by the same disaster/disturbance.
  • DNS services  – DNS services are often used in conjunction with hardware solutions to redirect traffic to a backup server(s) at an external data center. A downside of this setup includes  TTL-related delays  that can prevent seamless disaster recovery. Additionally, managing both DNS and internal data center hardware failover solutions is time consuming and complicated.
  • On-edge services  – On-edge failover is a managed solution operating from off-prem (e.g., from the  CDN  layer). Such solutions are more affordable and, most importantly, have no TTL reliance, resulting in near-instant failover that allows you to meet the most aggressive RTO goals.

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The Bottom Line

What is a business continuity plan (bcp), and how does it work.

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Investopedia / Ryan Oakley

What Is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)? 

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a system of prevention and recovery from potential threats to a company. The plan ensures that personnel and assets are protected and are able to function quickly in the event of a disaster.

Key Takeaways

  • Business continuity plans (BCPs) are prevention and recovery systems for potential threats, such as natural disasters or cyber-attacks.
  • BCP is designed to protect personnel and assets and make sure they can function quickly when disaster strikes.
  • BCPs should be tested to ensure there are no weaknesses, which can be identified and corrected.

Understanding Business Continuity Plans (BCPs)

BCP involves defining any and all risks that can affect the company's operations, making it an important part of the organization's risk management strategy. Risks may include natural disasters—fire, flood, or weather-related events—and cyber-attacks . Once the risks are identified, the plan should also include:

  • Determining how those risks will affect operations
  • Implementing safeguards and procedures to mitigate the risks
  • Testing procedures to ensure they work
  • Reviewing the process to make sure that it is up to date

BCPs are an important part of any business. Threats and disruptions mean a loss of revenue and higher costs, which leads to a drop in profitability. And businesses can't rely on insurance alone because it doesn't cover all the costs and the customers who move to the competition. It is generally conceived in advance and involves input from key stakeholders and personnel.

Business impact analysis, recovery, organization, and training are all steps corporations need to follow when creating a Business Continuity Plan.

Benefits of a Business Continuity Plan

Businesses are prone to a host of disasters that vary in degree from minor to catastrophic. Business continuity planning is typically meant to help a company continue operating in the event of major disasters such as fires. BCPs are different from a disaster recovery plan, which focuses on the recovery of a company's information technology system after a crisis.

Consider a finance company based in a major city. It may put a BCP in place by taking steps including backing up its computer and client files offsite. If something were to happen to the company's corporate office, its satellite offices would still have access to important information.

An important point to note is that BCP may not be as effective if a large portion of the population is affected, as in the case of a disease outbreak. Nonetheless, BCPs can improve risk management—preventing disruptions from spreading. They can also help mitigate downtime of networks or technology, saving the company money.

How To Create a Business Continuity Plan

There are several steps many companies must follow to develop a solid BCP. They include:

  • Business Impact Analysis : Here, the business will identify functions and related resources that are time-sensitive. (More on this below.)
  • Recovery : In this portion, the business must identify and implement steps to recover critical business functions.
  • Organization : A continuity team must be created. This team will devise a plan to manage the disruption.
  • Training : The continuity team must be trained and tested. Members of the team should also complete exercises that go over the plan and strategies.

Companies may also find it useful to come up with a checklist that includes key details such as emergency contact information, a list of resources the continuity team may need, where backup data and other required information are housed or stored, and other important personnel.

Along with testing the continuity team, the company should also test the BCP itself. It should be tested several times to ensure it can be applied to many different risk scenarios . This will help identify any weaknesses in the plan which can then be corrected.

In order for a business continuity plan to be successful, all employees—even those who aren't on the continuity team—must be aware of the plan.

Business Continuity Impact Analysis

An important part of developing a BCP is a business continuity impact analysis. It identifies the effects of disruption of business functions and processes. It also uses the information to make decisions about recovery priorities and strategies.

FEMA provides an operational and financial impact worksheet to help run a business continuity analysis. The worksheet should be completed by business function and process managers who are well acquainted with the business. These worksheets will summarize the following:

  • The impacts—both financial and operational—that stem from the loss of individual business functions and process
  • Identifying when the loss of a function or process would result in the identified business impacts

Completing the analysis can help companies identify and prioritize the processes that have the most impact on the business's financial and operational functions. The point at which they must be recovered is generally known as the “recovery time objective.”

Business Continuity Plan vs. Disaster Recovery Plan

BCPs and disaster recovery plans are similar in nature, the latter focuses on technology and information technology (IT) infrastructure. BCPs are more encompassing—focusing on the entire organization, such as customer service and supply chain. 

BCPs focus on reducing overall costs or losses, while disaster recovery plans look only at technology downtimes and related costs. Disaster recovery plans tend to involve only IT personnel—which create and manage the policy. However, BCPs tend to have more personnel trained on the potential processes. 

Why Is Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Important?

Businesses are prone to a host of disasters that vary in degree from minor to catastrophic and business continuity plans (BCPs) are an important part of any business. BCP is typically meant to help a company continue operating in the event of threats and disruptions. This could result in a loss of revenue and higher costs, which leads to a drop in profitability. And businesses can't rely on insurance alone because it doesn't cover all the costs and the customers who move to the competition.

What Should a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Include?

Business continuity plans involve identifying any and all risks that can affect the company's operations. The plan should also determine how those risks will affect operations and implement safeguards and procedures to mitigate the risks. There should also be testing procedures to ensure these safeguards and procedures work. Finally, there should be a review process to make sure that the plan is up to date.

What Is Business Continuity Impact Analysis?

An important part of developing a BCP is a business continuity impact analysis which identifies the effects of disruption of business functions and processes. It also uses the information to make decisions about recovery priorities and strategies.

FEMA provides an operational and financial impact worksheet to help run a business continuity analysis.

These worksheets summarize the impacts—both financial and operational—that stem from the loss of individual business functions and processes. They also identify when the loss of a function or process would result in the identified business impacts.

Business continuity plans (BCPs) are created to help speed up the recovery of an organization filling a threat or disaster. The plan puts in place mechanisms and functions to allow personnel and assets to minimize company downtime. BCPs cover all organizational risks should a disaster happen, such as flood or fire.  

Federal Emergency Management Agency. " Business Process Analysis and Business Impact Analysis User Guide ." Pages 15 - 17.

Ready. “ IT Disaster Recovery Plan .”

Federal Emergency Management Agency. " Business Process Analysis and Business Impact Analysis User Guide ." Pages 15-17.

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Neal Weinberg

Business continuity and disaster recovery planning: The basics

Good business continuity plans will keep your company up and running through interruptions of any kind: power failures, IT system crashes, natural disasters, pandemics and more.

storm disaster recovery disruption rain umbrella tornado challenge weather

Editor’s note: This article, originally published on March 27, 2014, has been updated to more accurately reflect recent trends.

Wildfires in California. A snowstorm in Texas.  Windstorms across the Midwest. Floods in Hawaii. Hurricanes in Florida and Louisiana. Russian hackers and ransomware attacks. And let’s not forget the global pandemic.

If anyone still thinks that having a disaster recovery and business continuity plan isn’t a high priority, you haven’t been paying attention to recent events. As we begin to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations are shifting to a new normal that will certainly be more remote, more digital and more cloud-based. Disaster recovery plans will have to evolve to keep up with these changing business conditions.

On top of that, business requirements for disaster recovery have changed dramatically. There was a time when it was acceptable for recovery time to be measured in days or hours. Now it’s minutes. In some cases, business units are demanding zero down time in the event of an unplanned outage.

Here are the basics of a state-of-the-art disaster recovery/business continuity (DR/BC) plan for 2021 and beyond. (Without getting too hung up on definitions, let’s say that disaster recovery is getting the IT infrastructure back up and running, while business continuity is a broader discipline that gets the business back up and functioning once the lights are back on.) 

Integrate cybersecurity, intrusion detection/response, disaster recovery into a comprehensive data protection plan

For CISOs, the first goal of a disaster recovery plan is to avoid the disaster in the first place, which is becoming increasingly challenging. First, data is no longer safely tucked away in an on-premises data center. It’s distributed across on-premises environments, hyperscale clouds, the edge and SaaS applications. ESG Research Senior Analyst Christophe Bertrand points out that SaaS presents a serious data protection and recovery challenge because “now you have mission critical applications running as a service that you have no control over.”

Second, the pandemic drove millions of employees out of the secure confines of the corporate office to their home offices, where the Wi-Fi is less secure and where employees might be sharing sensitive data on collaboration applications.

Third, hackers took notice of these expanding attack vectors and launched a barrage of new and more targeted ransomware attacks. According to the Sophos State of Ransomware 2020 Report, hackers have moved from spray-and-pray desktop attacks to server-based attacks. “These are highly targeted, sophisticated attacks that take more effort to deploy. However, they are typically far more deadly due to the higher value of assets encrypted and can cripple organizations with multi-million dollar ransom requests,” according to the report .

In response to these changing conditions, CISOs should focus on beefing up endpoint security for remote workers, deploying VPNs and encryption, protecting data at rest no matter where it lives, and also making sure that collaboration tools don’t become a source of security vulnerabilities.

Conduct a business impact analysis (BIA)

Organizations need to conduct a thorough business impact analysis to identify and evaluate potential effects of disasters through the lenses of financial fallout, regulatory compliance, legal liability, and employee safety. Gartner estimates that 70% of organizations are making disaster recovery decisions without any business-aligned data points or based on an outdated BIA. “Without the fact base the BIA provides, teams can only guess at the appropriate level of DR and what risks are tolerable. This results in overspend or unmet expectations,” according to Gartner.

Remember, you don’t need to protect everything. Organizations that conduct these exercises are often surprised to discover servers that do nothing but run a routine back-end business process once a month, or even once a year.

Organizations need to prioritize applications by their criticality to the business, and to identify all the dependencies associated with a business process, particularly applications that may have been virtualized across multiple physical servers, might be running in containers in the cloud, or in serverless cloud environments.

Classify data

Along the same lines, you don’t need to protect all data, just the data that you need to keep the business running. You do need to go through the process of locating, identifying, and classifying data. Be sure to protect data that falls under regulatory requirements, customer data, patient data, credit card data, intellectual property, private communications, etc. The good news is that tools can automate data identification and classification.

Consider disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS)

DRaaS is an increasingly popular option for CISOs at small- to mid-sized organizations who want to cost-effectively improve IT resilience, meet compliance or regulatory requirements, and address resource deficiencies. The DRaaS market is expected to grow at a rate of 12% a year over the next five years, according to Mordor Intelligence . DRaaS services cover the full gamut of disaster recovery and business continuity, providing flexibility and agility to enterprises, according to the Mordor report.

Gartner adds that as the DRaaS market has matured and vendor offerings have become more industrialized, the size and scope of DRaaS implementations have increased significantly, compared with a few years ago.

Develop a solid communication plan

Simply getting servers back up and running is essentially meaningless unless everyone knows their roles and responsibilities. Do people have the appropriate cell phone numbers and email addresses to share information? Do the relevant stakeholders have a playbook that spells out how to respond to a crisis in terms of contacting law enforcement, outside legal teams, utility companies, key technology and supply chain partners, senior leadership, the broader employee base, external PR teams, etc.?

Depending on the nature of the disaster, networking groups might need to establish new lines of connectivity for remote workers and reconfigure traffic flows; maintenance teams might need to perform remote troubleshooting, security teams might need to re-set firewalls, change access policies, extend security protection to new devices or to cloud-based resources. The biggest problem in a disaster isn’t related to data backups, it’s not having the right people in place and understanding all the steps required for the business to recover, says Bertrand.

Automate testing

To test disaster preparedness, companies traditionally conduct tabletop exercises in which key players physically come together to play out DR scenarios. However, only one-third of organizations perceive the exercises as “highly effective,”  according to a July study  by Osterman Research in association with Immersive Labs, a company that develops human-readiness skills in cybersecurity. The research also found that organizations don’t perform tabletop exercises often enough to keep up with evolving threats and that these exercises cost an average of $30,000. During the pandemic, it’s fair to assume that tabletop exercises fell by the wayside.

Doug Matthews, vice-president of enterprise data protection at Veritas, says there’s a better way. New tools can automatically test backup and recovery procedures on an ongoing basis and identify potential issues that need to be addressed. Modern testing solutions are also able to use sandboxing technology to create safe environments in which companies can test the recoverability of applications without impacting production networks.

Create immutable data backups

Ransomware attackers are targeting backup repositories, particularly in the cloud. They are also targeting SaaS applications. In response, organizations should keep one copy of data that can’t be altered. “Be sure that you have an immutable copy of backup data that nobody can touch,” advises Matthews, who says companies should have three copies of data at all times, not just two.

Companies should also investigate isolated recovery environments, such as air gapping, in which one copy of the data lives in an environment not connected to the production environment.

Consider data re-use

“Business is the data and data is the business,” says Bertrand. Once organizations have a copy of their important data sitting in a safe backup environment, why not think about ways to reuse it to advance the company’s digital transformation efforts.

The idea is for organizations to “understand what you have, where it is, how to protect it, store it and optimize it.”  Ultimately, Bertrand predicts that organizations will evolve an intelligent data strategy that encompasses regulatory compliance, disaster recovery/business continuity and data analytics.

Perform continuous updates

CISOs updating their DR/BC plans should take their cue from DevOps. It’s not about one-and-done, it’s about continuous improvement. DR planners need to be plugged into any changes at the company that might affect recoverability, including employees working from home permanently, stores or remote offices opening or closing, applications being replaced by SaaS, data moving to the edge, or DevOps moving to the cloud. Also, the technology is constantly improving, so be on the lookout for new tools that can help automate DR/BC processes. The plan should not be sitting on the shelf collecting dust. It should be updated on a regular basis.

Do long-term planning

In light of everything that has happened over the past 12 months, it’s a good time to shift thinking about DR/BC from reactive to proactive. Unfortunately, between public health emergencies, climate change and the increase in cyberattacks, disasters seem to be occurring more often and are certainly more devastating. DR/BC plans need to get ahead of the threats, not simply respond to them.

For example, if your company is in California, your DR/BC plan has to assume that there will be power outages from next season’s wildfires. Companies concerned about losing power when the next natural disaster hits might want to think about generating their own power from alternative sources.

A successful DR/BC plan requires that companies perform the basics, but it is also an opportunity for companies to find creative and innovative ways to keep the business running when disaster hits.

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Neal Weinberg

Neal Weinberg is a freelance technology writer and editor. He can be reached at [email protected] .

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5 Step Guide to Business Continuity Planning (BCP) in 2021

A business continuity plan provides a concrete plan to maintain business cohesion in challenging circumstances. Click here for the key steps that can help you formulate a formidable BCP.

A business continuity plan (BCP) is defined as a protocol of preventing and recovering from potentially large threats to the company’s business continuity. This article explains what a business continuity plan is today, its key benefits, and a step-by-step guide to creating a formidable plan.

Table of Contents

What is a business continuity plan (bcp), key benefits of having a business continuity plan, step-by-step guide to building a formidable business continuity plan (bcp) in 2021.

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a protocol of preventing and recovering from potentially large threats to the company’s business continuity. Such a plan often aims to address the need for updated business norms and operational standards in unpredictable circumstances such as natural disasters, data breach/ exposures, large scale system failures etc. The goal of such a plan is to ensure continuity of business with no or little damage to regular working environments, including job security for its employees.

It covers everything from business processes, human resources details, and more. Essentially a BCP provides a concrete plan to the organization to maintain business continuity even in challenging circumstances. 

Below are key reasons why businesses need to have a BCP today:

  • BCP’s relevance has gone up considerably after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and was also a major testing time for organizations that did have such a plan in place. The organizations which had a business continuity plan in place were better able to cope during these unprecedented circumstances better than those who did not have any such plans.
  • The recorded number of natural disasters has increased from 375 in 2016 to 409 in 2019 Opens a new window . Globally, the loss because of natural disasters was $232 billion in 2019, according to a study by Aon Opens a new window .
  • The number of cyberattacks has also increased in all geographies and all business verticals. MonsterCloud reported that cyberattacks have skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic. All this means that the organizations have to be better prepared to fight disasters. The importance of BCP can hardly be exaggerated in this context. Preparing a BCP is imperative for any enterprise, big or small, today. 

The end goal of a BCP is to ensure that the essential services continue to run in the event of an incident. For instance, if there is an earthquake where your customer service representatives operate from, your BCP will be able to tell you who will handle customer calls until the original office is restored.

Also Read: What Is Disaster Recovery? Definition, Cloud and On-premise, Benefits and Best Practices

Difference between a business continuity plan (BCP) and disaster recovery plan (DCP)

A BCP is often confused with a disaster recovery (DR) plan. While a DR plan is primarily focused on restoring the IT systems and infrastructure, a BCP is much more than that. It covers all areas and departments of the organization, including HR, marketing and sales, support functions. 

The underlying thought behind BCP is that IT systems can hardly work in silos. Other departments also need to be restored to cater to the client or for meeting the business demands. 

“Many people think a disaster recovery plan (DRP) is the same as a business continuity plan, but a DRP is only a small, yet essential, a portion of a full BCP. A DRP focuses solely on restoring an organization’s IT infrastructure while minimizing data loss. On the other hand, a BCP is a comprehensive guide on how to continue the mission and business-critical operations during a time of an unplanned disruption (natural disasters, pandemics, or malware),” says Caleb Pipkin, a security expert at Logically . 

Whether a business is small, big, or medium-sized, it needs a ‘plan B’ to recover quickly in the event of a natural disaster or a crisis and can survive the disruption. BCP helps you dust yourself and get back to business quickly and easily. It means that the enterprise will be better placed to address their customers’ needs even in the wake of a disaster. 

On the other hand, the lack of a plan means that your organization will take longer to recover from an event or incident. It could also lead to loss of business or clients. Let’s look at some key benefits of BCP.

1. It is a roadmap to act in a disaster

A well-defined business continuity plan is like a roadmap during a disruption. It allows the firms to react swiftly and effectively and maintain business continuity. In turn, this leads to a faster and complete recovery of the enterprise in the shortest possible timeframe. It brings down the business downtime and outlines the steps to be taken before, during, and after a crisis and thus helps maintain its financial viability. 

2. Offers a competitive edge

Fast reaction and business continuity during a disruption allow organizations to gain a competitive edge over its business rivals. It can translate into a significant competitive advantage in the long run. Further, your clients will be more confident in your ability to perform in adverse circumstances allowing you to build a long and sustainable relationship with your business partners.

Developing competence to act and handle any unfavorable event effectively has a positive effect on the company’s reputation and market value. It goes a long way in enhancing customer confidence. 

Also Read: Top 8 Disaster Recovery Software Companies in 2021

3. Cuts down losses

Disasters have a considerable impact on all types of business, whether big or small. Business disruption can lead to financial, legal, and reputational losses. Failure to plan could be disastrous for businesses. You may lose your customers while trying to get your business on track. In the worst circumstances, you may not be able to recover at all. A well-defined business continuity strategy minimizes the damage to an organization and allows you to bring down these losses as much as possible. 

4. Enables employment continuity and protects livelihoods

One of the most significant consequences of a disaster is the loss of employment. The loss of livelihood can be curtailed to an extent if the business continues to function in the event of a disaster. It leads to greater confidence in the workforce that their jobs might not be at risk, and the management is taking steps to protect their jobs. It helps build confidence in senior management’s ability to respond to the business disruption in a planned manner. 

5. Can be life-saving

A regularly tested and updated BCP can potentially help save the lives of the employees and the customers during a disaster. For instance, if the BCP plan for fire is regularly tested, the speed with which the workforce acts can help save lives. 

6. Preserves brand value and develops resilience

Possibly the biggest asset of an organization is its brand. Being able to perform in uncertain times helps build goodwill and maintain its brand value and may even help mitigate financial and reputational loss during a disaster. 

BCP curtails the damage to the company’s brand and finances because of a disaster event. This helps bring down the cost of any incident and thus help the company be more resilient. 

Also Read: 10 Best Practices for Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP)

7. Enables adherence to compliance requirements

Having a BCP allows organizations to have additional benefits of complying with regulatory requirements. It is a legal requirement in several countries.

8. Helps in supply chain security

A precise BCP goes a long way in protecting the supply chain from damage. It ensures continuity in delivering products and services by being able to perform critical activities.

9. Enhances operational efficiency

One of BCP’s lesser-known benefits is that it helps identify areas of operational efficiency in the organization. Developing BCP calls for an in-depth evaluation of the company’s processes. This can potentially reveal the areas of improvement. Essentially, it gathers information that can benefit in enhancing the effectiveness of the processes and operations. 

Also Read: 7 Ways to Build an Effective Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan  

The COVID-19 pandemic has put the spotlight on preparing for a disaster like never before. We make the job easier for you by listing out the key steps in building a formidable business continuity plan: 

How to Build a Business Continuity Plan

How to Build a Business Continuity Plan

Step 1: Risk assessment 

This phase involves asking crucial questions to evaluate the risks faced by the company. What are the likely business threats and disruptions which are most likely to occur? What is the most profitable activity of your organization? It is vital to prioritize key risks and operations, which will help mitigate the damage in the event of a disaster. 

Step 2: Business impact analysis

The second step involves a thorough and in-depth assessment of your business processes to determine the vulnerable areas and the potential losses if those processes are disrupted. This is also known as Business Impact Analysis . 

Essentially, Business impact analysis (BIA) is a process that helps the organization define the impact if critical business operations are interrupted because of a disaster, accident, or emergency. It helps in identifying the most crucial elements of the business processes. For instance, maintaining a supply chain might be more critical during a crisis than public relations.

While there is no formal standard for a BIA, it typically involves the following steps: 

  • Collating information: As a first step, a questionnaire is prepared to find out critical business processes and resources that will help in the proper assessment of the impact of a disruptive event. One-on-one sessions with key management members may be conducted further to gain insights into the organization’s processes and workings.
  • Analysis: This is followed by analyzing the collected information. A manual or computer-assisted analysis is conducted. The analysis is based on an interruption in which crucial activities or resources are not available. Typically it works on the assumption of the worst-case scenario, even when the chances of a risk likelihood are low. This approach is followed to zero in on the systems that, when disrupted or interrupted, threaten the organization’s very survival. This way, these processes are prioritized in the business continuity plan. 

The analysis phase helps identify the minimum staff and resources required for running the organization in the event of a crisis. This also allows the organizations to assess the impact on the revenue if the business is unable to run for a day, a week, or more. There might be contractual penalties, regulatory fines, and workforce-related expenditure which need to be taken into account while finding out the impact on the business. Further, there might be specific vulnerabilities of the firm, and they need to be considered in the BIA. 

  • Preparing a report: The next step is preparing a BIA report, which is assessed by the senior management. The report is a thorough analysis of the gathered information along with findings. It also gives recommendations on the procedure that should be followed in the event of a business disruption. The BIA report also shares the impact on the revenue, supply chain, and customer delivery to the business in a specific time frame. 

The business impact analysis report may also include a checklist of all the resources, such as the names of key personnel, data backup , contact information, emergency responders, and more.

  • Presenting the report: Usually, this report goes through several amendments before being cleared by the senior management. The involvement of senior management is crucial to the success of the business continuity plan. It sends out a strong signal in the organization that it is a serious initiative. 

Also Read: Will Extreme Weather Events Affect Your Business? Lessons From the Texas Winter Storm

Step 3: BCP Testing

Several testing methods are available to test the effectiveness of the BCP. Here are a few common ones: 

  • TableTop test: As the name suggests, the identified executives go through the plan in detail to evaluate whether it will work on not. Different disaster types and the response to them are discussed at length. This type of testing is designed to make all the key personnel aware of their role in the event of a disaster. The response procedure is reviewed, and responsibilities are outlined, so everybody knows their roles.
  • Walk through: In this type of testing, the team members go through their part in the plan with a specific disaster in mind. Drills or a simulated response and disaster role-playing are part of this. This is a more thorough form of testing and likely to reveal the shortcoming in the plan. Any vulnerabilities discovered should be used to update the BCP accordingly.
  • Disaster simulation testing: In this type of testing, an environment that simulates an actual disaster is created. This is the closest to the actual event and gives the best case scenario about the plan’s workability. It will help the team find gaps that might be overlooked in the other types of tests. Document the results of your testing so you can compare the improvement from the previous tests. It will help you in strengthening your business continuity plan. 

Frequency of testing – Typically, organizations test BCP at least twice a year. At the same time, it depends on the size of your organization and the business vertical you operate in.

Step 4: Maintenance

A business continuity plan should not be treated as a one-time exercise. It needs to be maintained , so the organization’s structural and people changes are updated regularly. The key personnel might move on from the firm, and this would need to be updated in the Business Impact Analysis and BCP. The process for regular updating of the documentation should be followed to ensure that the organization is not caught on the wrong foot in case of a business disruption. 

Also Read: Offsite Data Replication: A Great Way To Meet Recovery Time Objectives

Step 5: Communication

Sometimes executives tend to ignore communication while preparing a BCP. It is a crucial aspect, and your BCP should clearly define who will maintain the communication channels with the employees, regulators, business partners, and partners during the crisis. The contact information of the key people should be readily accessible for the BCP to work without any trouble.

In the end, the organizations should accept that despite preparing a formidable business continuity plan, several factors beyond your control may still affect its success or failure. The key executives might not be available in the event of a crisis; both the primary and the alternate data recovery sites might have been affected by the event; the communications network might be damaged, and so on. Such factors are common during a natural disaster and may lead to the limited success of the business continuity plan. 

The success of a business depends on it acting swiftly and efficiently when confronted with an unanticipated crisis. Any failure to do so results in a financial and reputational loss, which takes up a long time to recover. It can be avoided if the organization quickly gathers itself during a disaster. A business continuity plan is then of paramount importance for a business of any size. At the same time, it is crucial to ensure that the BCP is not a one-time exercise. It needs to be continuously evaluated, tested, amended, and maintained so it doesn’t let you down when you need it the most. 

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Prepare for Emergencies with Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plans

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This article was updated March 21, 2023.

How a company responds during an emergency or other unexpected event can drastically impact how quickly it can resume operations and its prospects for future success. Planning ahead and having systems in place for such events can be just as important as the actual response once an event occurs.

To prepare, companies should have both business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans in place. While business continuity and disaster recovery plans are two separate types of plans, they should complement each other as there are many similar concerns for each.

Below, we outline how these plans differ and steps your company can take to design effective plans should an emergency arise:

  • What Is a Business Continuity Plan?
  • What Is a Disaster Recovery Plan?
  • How Does Disaster Recovering Planning Differ from Business Continuity Planning?
  • What Types of Events Should Be Included in a Disaster Recovery Plan?

What Are the Benefits of Planning Ahead?

  • What Does a Business Continuity Plan Typically Include?
  • What Processes and Procedures Belong in a Business Continuity Plan?
  • What Is the Purpose of a Disaster Recovery Plan?
  • What Does a Disaster Recovery Plan Typically Include?

How Do You Test a Disaster Recovery Plan?

A business continuity plan is a predefined approach and procedure for how a business will continue to run when coping with an emergency.

A disaster recovery plan is a predefined approach and procedure for restoring the business to full functionality, following a system failure or compromise, while keeping the impact to a minimum.

While a business continuity plan focuses on defining how business operations should function under abnormal circumstances during a disaster or emergency, a disaster recovery plan focuses on getting applications and systems back to normal.

Click here to download a cybersecurity guide

Business emergencies can include events that are intentionally or accidentally caused by humans as well as natural disasters.

Potential disasters and threats can include the following:

  • Pandemic flu
  • Banking uncertainty
  • Computer and server shutdown or denial-of-service and sabotage
  • Ransomware attack
  • Bomb threat
  • Severe weather or wildfire

 Regardless of the origin, business disasters may cause:

  • Death or significant injury
  • Damage to property or environmental damage
  • Closing of business
  • Work or service stoppage
  • Negative impact on the company’s financial standing or company image

Business continuity planning and disaster recovering planning both provide several benefits to your organization, especially when they’re drafted in tandem, including:

  • People and property protection
  • Morale boost
  • Improved decision-making
  • Risk management

People and Property Protection

Having emergency plans in place can help safeguard life and property of the company and its employees. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) even requires companies with more than 10 employees to write these plans in compliance with its Regulation 1910.38 Emergency Action Plans .

Morale Boost

When employees know plans are in place, they may feel safer. This can help boost morale and potentially increase business value perception to buyers who recognize the responsibility and preparedness of the company.

Improved Decision-Making

Planning ahead allows for systemic, structured, and timely implementation of your plan and helps you make decisions based on the best available information, should an emergency occur.

It also provides room to be dynamic and responsive to change. Flexibility can allow you to take human and cultural factors into account, such as supporting workers with medical needs or managing teams that operate across geographic regions, and allows the company to be transparent and inclusive with its plans.

Even if you haven’t faced an emergency, planning for one can help facilitate continual improvement of the organization and become an integral part of all organizational processes.

Risk Management

Managing risk for organizations includes risks posed by relationships with third parties, such as service providers or vendors. These third parties can play a significant part in the overall risk for an organization based on the types of data they have access to or handle. They can also be used to provide recovery services or high availability for systems that need to meet high levels of up time.

For companies serving highly regulated industries, such as health care, financial services, and utilities, third-party risk management often includes assessing business continuity plans and disaster recovering plans. By documenting and testing these plans, organizations are better equipped to meet the expectations of those they serve.

There are several key factors to consider when creating a business continuity plan. While employees and customer safety should be your top concern, there are also other areas of focus that are especially important.

Business continuity planning should focus on:

  • Duration your business can last without its tools, assets, operating locations, and other elements crucial to operations
  • Possible outcomes if you’re denied access to facilities, servers, customer records, or other needs
  • Length of time you can operate without telephone service, electricity, or temporary electricity if running only on generators, water, and other utilities
  • Necessary changes to processes and workflows to maintain critical operations until the situation can be returned to normal
  • Scenarios most likely to occur that would create the greatest disruption to the organization

To prepare for those concerns, a business continuity plan should define processes and procedures for the following:

  • Assessing and planning for threats to business operations
  • Maintaining operations and meeting obligations during emergencies
  • Testing your plan, including test types, testing schedules, and documentation requirements

Steps to assess various risks should include the following:

  • Estimating the likelihood of the event based on data, such as the historical frequency of natural disasters in an area
  • Defining risk categories, such as operational, legal, reputational, or security risks
  • Estimating the impact to assets or processes based on the defined risk categories—for example, a natural disaster that causes a server outage may affect a public website hosting a storefront, which could impact revenue or relationships with partners
  • Mitigating controls such as backups and alternate operating locations

Primary and secondary points of contact should be determined internally and externally. It may help to create templates or prewritten communications as well as communications schedules that can be deployed immediately in the event of an emergency. This helps put plans into action and address employee and public concerns.

Emergencies can require all hands on deck, so it’s important to identify top personnel and their responsibilities in your plan, as well as team members to serve as alternates in case the primary role player is unavailable.

Responsibilities should be defined and assigned for the following roles:

  • Crisis manager or site coordinator
  • Engineering or maintenance officer
  • Human resources officer
  • Communications or public relations officer
  • Outside members such as police, fire, and government personnel

Employees will need to be notified and provided instruction in an emergency situation. Employee contact information should be up-to-date and easily accessible with departmental organizational charts as well as cell and home phone numbers and emergency contact information included.

Planning should also consider the likelihood that communications systems may be inaccessible and define alternative means of connecting with employees and team members, including any third parties supporting business continuity efforts.

What Safety and Security Measures Are Included?

First-aid kits and other resources should be inspected at least on a monthly basis. Identify local hospitals, medical treatment options, and available 911 services so the correct parties can be contacted as quickly as possible if needed.

Evacuation and Access to Property

Evacuation plans from all company buildings should be readily available, and employees can be instructed on evacuation routes through drills. Additionally, they should be provided directions to shelter and safe areas.

For those not at a company location or to plan for how to access property following an emergency, alternate routes to key facilities should also be provided in the event of damaged roads.

How Will You Access Contractors, Support Equipment, and Utility Companies?

Should you require the assistance of emergency personnel, repairs to infrastructure, or equipment, it’s important to consider how you’ll access these resources. Contractor contact information and tools and equipment requirements, as well as rentals, should be readily available.

Equipment you should consider having access to includes the following:

  • Generators for backup power including portable options such as trailers
  • Computing equipment and storage
  • Trailers to transport fuel to generators, equipment for repairs, or sandbags before storms

In addition to requesting these materials, it’s important to make sure anyone who will come in contact with the equipment has a deep knowledge of how to properly operate machinery and assess any safety concerns.

Other important vendors and contacts to have easy access to include the following:

  • Banks and financial institutions
  • Computer and IT backup support providers
  • Building contractors
  • Fuel companies

Do You Have Proper Insurance?  

Should damage take place to your property or if people are harmed, you’ll want to make sure the proper insurance protocol is in place. You should be able to easily access the contact and claims reporting information for the following:

  • Property-casualty agent
  • Group health insurance
  • Life or accidental death and dismemberment insurance

Insurance concerns can also extend to cars and other vehicles, so it’s important to have access to vehicle identification numbers (VINs) in case they go missing or are damaged.

The purpose of disaster recovery planning is to support critical operations by returning IT systems to full functionality. This should be prioritized based on customer needs, regulatory requirements, and the importance to your organization or the operations that the IT system supports.

You should be able to determine the availability of workaround options compared to work stoppages to do the following:

  • Reduce the likelihood or impact of an event through technology and controls
  • Maintain minimum mission-critical systems to allow for eventual full restoration
  • Recover post-disaster by bringing all systems back online to full operational state

A disaster recovery plan has many of the same elements of a business continuity plan that need to be documented and defined ahead of time, but there are several key elements that are different. These elements include:

  • Business impact analysis
  • Assumptions and constraints
  • Communication processes
  • Data and system backup plan
  • Damage and impact assessment
  • Response communication and action plan

A business impact analysis is essential for determining and evaluating the effects of an interruption to critical business operations. It assesses a disaster’s impact over time and helps establish recovery strategies, priorities, and requirements based on system criticality.

Business leaders and management should be involved in determining the system recovery priorities as this analysis will be used to document the critical systems, document dependencies with other systems, and prioritize the system recovery efforts.

What Is the Importance of Communication Processes and Role Assignments?

Communication is a key process during the recovery effort so recovery teams should understand their roles and responsibilities. A disaster recovery coordinator should be established, along with a backup to this position. These persons will be responsible for coordinating, communicating, and managing staff during the recovery efforts.

An emergency response team should also be documented as these personnel will be responsible for the actual recovery of the systems. They will need to prepare the recovery site for operation, coordinate recovery steps and activities, interface with system vendors, and ensure recovery is complete once systems are restored.

Disaster preparedness is rooted in an agreed-upon backup strategy that addresses acceptable recovery time and data loss, adequate system redundancy, and sound data restoration processes. The data backup plan details the backup strategy employed to ensure that data is available in order to restore systems during emergency and nonemergency situations.

This plan outlines the backup strategy for all of the critical systems identified in the business impact analysis. The recovery and response action plan provides detailed steps on the recovery procedures that need to be performed in order to restore systems and data. The recovery steps are critical as they will help guide staff in the steps necessary to fully recover a system.

Once a plan is in place, perform tests that help verify that it can be properly executed.

Diverse testing methods must be deployed so that multiple scenarios can be addressed and tested. Suggested testing methods include the following:

  • Walkthrough testing
  • Simulation testing
  • Checklist testing
  • Full-interruption testing
  • Parallel testing

Testing can be done for several purposes including the following:

  • Exercising the recovery processes and procedures
  • Familiarizing staff with the recovery process and documentation
  • Verifying the effectiveness of the recovery documentation and site
  • Establishing if recovery objectives are achievable
  • Identifying improvements to the disaster recovery strategy, infrastructure, and recovery processes

We’re Here to Help

Emergency preparedness is all about planning, training, and maintaining a supportive culture. To learn more about how your business can organize business continuity and disaster recovery plans and confidently test and execute them, contact your Moss Adams professional.

Assurance, tax, and consulting offered through Moss Adams LLP. ISO/IEC 27001 services offered through Cadence Assurance LLC, a Moss Adams company. Wealth management offered through Moss Adams Wealth Advisors LLC. Services from India provided by Moss Adams (India) LLP.

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Business continuity vs disaster recovery: The difference explained

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If you’re in IT, you’ve definitely heard business continuity plans (BCP) and disaster recovery plans (DRP) mentioned together. Sometimes, these two are merged into one acronym spelled out as “BCDR”. And while BCP and DRP are closely related, they solve for fundamentally distinct issues.

Before defining their differences, it’s vital to understand just how important a role BCP and DRP play in an organization. Specifically, BCP and DRP help an organization continue operating. Disruptions in business are inevitable. Without a plan, the core functions of the business cannot run smoothly, and this can impact the bottom line.

For instance, when natural disasters strike small to medium businesses, many are never able to recover. Even if they initially recover, 25% of SMBs are out of business within a year following a disaster. And the number of costly disasters is only increasing. NOAA (National Centers for Environmental Information) reports that in the last five years, the number of billion-plus dollar disasters (adjusted for inflation) in the United States has increased to an average of 17.8 events per year , whereas the average between 1980-2022 was just 7.9 events per year.

Today we’ll examine the Venn diagram between BCP and DRP; how they complement each other, overlap, and combine to help protect a business from significant disruption during disasters.

Let’s dive in.

What Is a Business Continuity Plan?

A business continuity plan spells out how an organization will continue to run while experiencing a disaster or major disruption. These can include things like natural disasters, data breaches, strong economic downturns, hardware failures, and human errors. The core goal of a business continuity plan is to keep the business’ core functions operational throughout the disruption.

A business continuity plan is tailored to the specific needs of your organization. However, the components listed below comprise the core of a strong plan.

Identification of critical business processes and resources

What are your business’ major functions? What resources are necessary to maintain those functions? Which processes should take precedence when a disaster occurs?

For example, if your firm is a food processing organization, some of the critical business processes could include:

  • Sourcing raw materials
  • Manufacturing products
  • Inspecting products for safety
  • Delivering finished products to retail stores and customers
  • Employee management and payroll

 Establish roles for participants and stakeholders

Another important component is a clause spelling out stakeholders and their roles. Knowing who’s responsible for what in times of disruption ensures a business runs smoothly throughout a disaster.

  • An emergency preparedness manager is responsible for ensuring employees and customers are safe.
  • An emergency management director develops and carries out the plan for the business to follow
  • A disaster program manager is responsible for organizing other services, including shelters or triage centers.
  • A large business may want to put together a committee of individuals responsible for different areas of the organization including technology and communication.

Detailed documentation

Every bit of data and workflow needs to be detailed and recorded in the BCP. When a disaster strikes, your organization will know exactly what to do and in which order since there’s a recorded blueprint decided upon beforehand. At minimum, evacuation policies need to be documented, contact lists need to be created and the participants and stakeholders listed above need to create plans for their areas of responsibility. If hazardous materials are at play, a separate plan needs to be made for handling. Disasters are chaotic; a documented plan helps make them less so. After a decision is made, write it down and store it somewhere that everyone knows about and can access.

Business impact analysis

What will the organization lose when a certain disruption strikes? For example, one cybersecurity report estimates small businesses lose almost  $8,600 an hour  during unplanned downtime, so being able to  protect your business from downtime  is paramount.

What specific losses will the organization incur? Organizations are faced with losses including declines to output and revenue, harmed reputation, impact of client or customer wellbeing, disruption to flow or delivery of services.

Defined (and documented) RTO and RPO

The recovery time objective (RTO) details how long systems, processes, or data can be impacted  without fatally affecting a business. For instance, if your RTO is 3 hours, operations must be running again within 3 hours of a disaster.

Conversely, the recovery point objective (RPO) outlines how much data an organization is willing to lose during a disruption. For example, if an enterprise’s RPO is 15 minutes, the organization must have a data backup every 15 minutes to achieve the RPO goal.

When creating your BCP, you’ll need to set the RTO and define the RPO. The goal of both is to minimize the chances of data loss and speed up the resumption of operations. But, it is not possible to have zero downtime or zero data loss. RPO and RTO can’t be based on hope or idealism but have to be based on what is realistically achievable (in terms of feasibility and cost), balanced with what is critical for business viability.

Testing in advance of actual disruption

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy” so… it’s probably best if that first encounter happens in testing. You will not be able to control for every eventuality but, the more you test and prepare the smaller your risk surface is. That’s why it’s critical to test how your plan holds up during a simulated disaster. Unfortunately,  23% of organizations never test their BCP or DRP . Don’t be one of those 23%; please.

There are a few ways to test your BCP. First, you can create a checklist. Second, walk through the exercises. And third, you can produce simulations and ensure your plan is built to protect your organization to the fullest.

A BCP test seeks to find out the following:

  • If the plan works when disaster strikes
  • Gaps and opportunities within the plan
  • Whether the business can meet its RTO and RPO goals
  • Whether the emergency communication plan will be effective

Testing your plan simulating the disruptions most likely to affect your organization is crucial. Data breaches or loss, human error, climate disasters, hardware failure, and power outages are common disruptions to test in advance.

Testing should happen once per year, and a commonly employed mechanism to do so is a  tabletop exercise .

business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans

What Is a Disaster Recovery Plan?

A disaster recovery plan is detailed documentation showing how a business can quickly recover operations after an unplanned incident. For example, a data breach disaster recovery plan might include how it will restore data access and IT infrastructure after the breach. Even though they are often used interchangeably the DRP is usually a component of the business’ larger BCP. Every disaster requires continuity but not every continuity issue is as the result of a disaster. 

The main objectives of the DRP include the following:

  • Keep infrastructure and human resources safe
  • Guarantee continued business operations
  • Minimize financial losses
  • Protect organizational data
  • Prevent reputation loss
  • Limit liability

Below are the most vital components of the disaster recovery plan:

  • A summary of critical processes, resources, and systems
  • Stakeholders responsible for these processes, resources, and systems
  • Detailed steps to recover, restart, and reconfigure the critical processes and systems
  • RTO and RPO
  • Any other emergency and mitigation steps that are essential to recovering after a disaster

Before creating the disaster recovery plan , you’ll need to conduct a disaster impact analysis and document risks associated with respective disasters. Doing so helps you identify which resources are needed where and how long it will take to bounce back.

How are BCP and DRP Similar?

BCP and DRP both work to ensure that an organization’s core functions are not hindered in times of disaster. They take a proactive approach to protect the organization and minimize loss during disasters. When creating both plans, you’ll need to account for business critical processes, systems, and resources. You’ll also need to define the RTO and the RPO when creating both plans. Another essential overlap between the two is the need for impact analysis and testing before making the plan official.

Finally, neither plan is set in stone. Business continuity and disaster recovery plans require constant review to align with changes in IT infrastructure, organizational goals, and existing threats.

How Do BCP and DRP Differ?

BCP and DRP complement each other and overlap during planning, but they have different functions. For starters, the business continuity plan is typically focused on organization-wide strategic planning. A disaster recovery plan, on the other hand, details how an organization can continue to run specifically during or after a disaster.

A BCP broadly covers every necessary detail, including the resources, processes, IT systems, and stakeholders across the business and covers a variety of issues which a business may face (including things like succession planning). More importantly, the BCP outlines step-by-step what needs to happen during and after a certain disaster.

A disaster recovery plan is a fundamental part of the business continuity plan. Often the DRP focuses on IT and how an organization will recover or restore IT infrastructure, applications, and systems critical to business operations following a disaster (physical, cyber, natural etc).

Put simply: the key difference is that the DRP assumes something has already happened, while the BCP includes components intended to prevent issues in the first place.

Be Ready with CrashPlan

Disaster and disruptions don’t discriminate based on whether you’re a small business or an enterprise. If disaster strikes and you’re not prepared, you risk heavy financial loss, damaged reputation, and potential liability.

Business continuity and disaster recovery plans add a layer of protection for when disasters occur. They’re a proactive approach to ensure you’re minimally impacted by disruption. Data recovery is a critical piece of this puzzle; how can your operations continue after a disaster without access to your data?

CrashPlan’s automatic cloud backup gives you immediate, easy access to endpoint data after hardware failure, natural disasters, data breaches, or any other calamity.

Find out today how CrashPlan helps you safeguard and access your organization’s data during disasters.

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Business Continuity Planning

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Organize a business continuity team and compile a  business continuity plan  to manage a business disruption. Learn more about how to put together and test a business continuity plan with the videos below.

Business Continuity Plan Supporting Resources

  • Business Continuity Plan Situation Manual
  • Business Continuity Plan Test Exercise Planner Instructions
  • Business Continuity Plan Test Facilitator and Evaluator Handbook

Business Continuity Training Videos

The Business Continuity Planning Suite is no longer supported or available for download.

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Business Continuity Training Introduction

An overview of the concepts detailed within this training. Also, included is a humorous, short video that introduces viewers to the concept of business continuity planning and highlights the benefits of having a plan. Two men in an elevator experience a spectrum of disasters from a loss of power, to rain, fire, and a human threat. One man is prepared for each disaster and the other is not.

View on YouTube

Business Continuity Training Part 1: What is Business Continuity Planning?

An explanation of what business continuity planning means and what it entails to create a business continuity plan. This segment also incorporates an interview with a company that has successfully implemented a business continuity plan and includes a discussion about what business continuity planning means to them.

Business Continuity Training Part 2: Why is Business Continuity Planning Important?

An examination of the value a business continuity plan can bring to an organization. This segment also incorporates an interview with a company that has successfully implemented a business continuity plan and includes a discussion about how business continuity planning has been valuable to them.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: What's the Business Continuity Planning Process?

An overview of the business continuity planning process. This segment also incorporates an interview with a company about its process of successfully implementing a business continuity plan.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 1

The first of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should “prepare” to create a business continuity plan.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 2

The second of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should “define” their business continuity plan objectives.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 3

The third of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should “identify” and prioritize potential risks and impacts.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 4

The fourth of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should “develop” business continuity strategies.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 5

The fifth of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should define their “teams” and tasks.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 6

The sixth of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should “test” their business continuity plans. View on YouTube

Last Updated: 12/21/2023

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Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery: 5 Key Differences

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Many professionals operate under the assumption that their workplace will remain largely unchanged from one day to the next, finding comfort in rhythms and routines. Sometimes, however, events disrupt business as usual. A critical aspect of leadership is preparing for those interruptions, creating strategies and plans that can keep core business functions intact even under duress.

Two specific fields address potential business interruptions: business continuity and disaster recovery. These disciplines minimize the impact that a catastrophic event might have on a business’s ability to reliably deliver its products and services.

While both fields are important, and even similar in some aspects, they are not synonymous. There are important differences in business continuity vs. disaster recovery, and those in leadership or emergency preparedness roles can benefit from understanding the core distinctions.

One way to develop a clear understanding of business continuity vs. disaster recovery is through studying emergency management. An online program in this field can offer professionals the skills needed to successfully lead companies through different kinds of crises.

Why Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Matter

Business continuity outlines exactly how a business will proceed during and following a disaster. It may provide contingency plans, outlining how the business will continue to operate even if it has to move to an alternate location. Business continuity planning may also take into account smaller interruptions or minor disasters, such as extended power outages.

Disaster recovery refers to the plans a business puts into place for responding to a catastrophic event, such as a natural disaster, fire, act of terror, active shooter or cybercrime. Disaster recovery involves the measures a business takes to respond to an event and return to safe, normal operation as quickly as possible.

The Importance of Advanced Planning

When businesses face disasters and don’t have the proper plans in place, the effects can be catastrophic. The most obvious effect is financial loss; the longer a business goes without delivering its products and services, the greater its financial losses. Eventually, these losses may force a business to make tough decisions, such as cutting employees. But there can also be technological consequences, including the loss of important or sensitive data.

Having business continuity and disaster recovery plans in place can help companies minimize the consequences of a catastrophic event. They can also provide peace of mind; employees and business owners alike may feel more comfortable in a work setting where there are clear policies for how to respond to disasters.

In many companies, crisis management professionals are responsible for developing and implementing these plans, evaluating and revising them as needed, and training employees to ensure they know how to follow the specified strategies.

Similarities Between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning often seem interdependent. While the two concepts are not the same, they overlap in some areas and work best when developed in tandem.

  • Both are proactive strategies that help a business prepare for sudden, cataclysmic events. Instead of reacting to a disaster, both disciplines take a preemptive approach, seeking to minimize the effects of a catastrophe before it occurs.
  • Businesses can use both to prepare for a range of ecological and human-made disasters. Business continuity and disaster recovery are instrumental to preparing for pandemics, natural disasters, wildfires and even cyberattacks.
  • Both require regular review, and they may sometimes require revision to ensure they match the company’s evolving goals. An emergency management leader will continually test and modify these plans as needed.

Differences Between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

A closer look at business continuity vs. disaster recovery reveals some key distinctions. Ultimately, these differences highlight the fact that businesses need to have plans of both kinds in place to be sufficiently prepared for disaster.

  • Business continuity focuses on keeping business operational during a disaster, while disaster recovery focuses on restoring data access and IT infrastructure after a disaster. In other words, the former is concerned with keeping the shop open even in unusual or unfavorable circumstances, while the latter focuses on returning it to normal as expediently as possible.
  • Unlike business continuity plans, disaster recovery strategies may involve creating additional employee safety measures, such as conducting fire drills or purchasing emergency supplies. Combining the two allows a business to place equal focus on maintaining operations and ensuring that employees are safe.
  • Business continuity and disaster recovery have different goals. Effective business continuity plans limit operational downtime, whereas effective disaster recovery plans limit abnormal or inefficient system function. Only by combining the two plans can businesses comprehensively prepare for disastrous events.
  • A business continuity strategy can ensure communication methods such as phones and network servers continue operating in the midst of a crisis. Meanwhile, a disaster recovery strategy helps to ensure an organization’s ability to return to full functionality after a disaster occurs. To put it differently, business continuity focuses on keeping the lights on and the business open in some capacity, while disaster recovery focuses on getting operations back to normal.
  • Some businesses may incorporate disaster recovery strategies as part of their overall business continuity plans. Disaster recovery is one step in the broader process of safeguarding a company against all contingencies.

Leadership in Times of Crisis

Crisis management is an important skill for all business leaders. In fact, crisis management draws upon many of the other skills necessary for business success. Analytical and problem-solving skills as well as flexibility in decision making are essential for assessing potential threats and determining how to proactively address them. Communication skills, both verbal and written, are necessary for articulating a plan and training employees on how they should act in response to a crisis.

“Leadership in managing crises can minimize the damage imposed by an incident while lack of effective leadership worsens the impact,” says Naim Kapucu, Pegasus Professor and director of the School of Public Administration at the University of Central Florida (UCF) . “Organizations should have leaders with crisis management competencies to effectively manage disasters and crises based on the contingencies and environmental and organizational factors.”

Crisis management skills matter because any company can experience a catastrophe that limits its ability to function as normal, and often it will have little time to pivot and adapt. “Crises are not a good time to reorganize adequately operating organizational systems, much less try to implement wholesale organizational changes or reforms,” says Kapucu. Having a plan in place, ready to be executed, can make all the difference. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into stark relief the uncertainty that businesses face and the extreme disruptions that can take place.

Programs such as the University of Central Florida’s online Master of Emergency and Crisis Management can help leaders fortify the knowledge, competencies, and skills they need to help their enterprises weather these times of crisis.

Crisis Management Careers

Crisis management is a key part of several careers. Each of the following positions offers a different level of leadership through tumultuous times.

Emergency Management Director

Emergency management directors develop and execute the plans that businesses follow to respond to natural disasters and other emergencies. Strong analytical, problem-solving, delegation and communication skills are essential. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the annual median salary for emergency management directors in 2019 was $74,590.

Disaster Program Manager

Disaster program managers may coordinate shelters, manage triage centers or organize other services in the wake of a disaster. These professionals must be skilled in remaining calm under extreme pressure; empathy and understanding are also important. The annual median salary for this role was around $48,000, according to May 2020 PayScale data.

Geographic Systems Information Coordinator

Geographic systems information coordinators use a wide range of data sources, such as land surveys, to help anticipate and prepare for different disasters. Technical skills and data analysis competencies are vital for success in this role. PayScale reports that the annual median salary for these coordinators was around $58,000 as of May 2020.

Emergency Preparedness Manager

Emergency preparedness managers are typically responsible for making sure employees and customers are safe. They may report directly to the emergency preparedness director, whose role is more comprehensive. The annual median salary of emergency preparedness managers was around $69,000 as of May 2020, according to PayScale.

Developing a Career in Emergency Management

Business continuity and disaster recovery plans help businesses prepare for worst-case scenarios; they provide peace of mind, a sense of stability and key safeguards against major loss and disruption. The University of Central Florida’s online Master of Emergency and Crisis Management (MECM) degree program helps professionals prepare for this important work.

The MECM curriculum exposes students to key emergency management skills, including developing, testing and communicating plans. It emphasizes the financial, ethical, political and practical dimensions of disaster response. Find out more about the MECM degree program today and embark on a new career on the front lines of crisis management.

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  • Career and Workforce Education, MA
  • College Teaching and Leadership
  • Corrections Leadership
  • Destination Marketing and Management
  • Educational Leadership, MA
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  • Engineering Management, MS
  • Event Management
  • Health Informatics and Information Management, BS
  • Health Services Administration, BS
  • Hospitality Management, BS
  • Industrial Engineering, MSIE
  • Lifestyle Community Management, BS
  • Local Director of Career & Technical Education
  • Lodging and Restaurant Management, BS
  • Master of Public Administration, MPA
  • Nonprofit Management
  • Nonprofit Management, MNM
  • Police Leadership
  • Project Engineering
  • Public Administration

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What Is a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) Plan and Why Is It Important?

The worst thing any organization could face is an unexpected and forced suspension of all its activities. Threats differ in nature and magnitude, but the one thing they have in common is that they are a menace to your organization’s operations and critical data.

There is absolutely no way to guarantee that your organization will never face a disaster. However, there are measures you can take to mitigate the damage and quickly restart operations. A business continuity plan (BCP) is the perfect starting point. This blog post helps you understand what a BCP is and how you can create a personalized plan for your organization.

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What Is Business Continuity?

Business continuity is the list of procedures that allows a company to resume its mission-critical operations as quickly as possible following a disruptive event. It is a comprehensive strategy that combines all available resources while specifying individual and organizational responsibilities. A business continuity plan details the essential services, such as IT infrastructure and communication channels, that should be maintained during disruption and the steps to achieve that.

A simple human error, a hardware failure, a fire, a ransomware attack, or a full-scale natural disaster can impact day-to-day operations or, even worse, cause an organization to shut down entirely. In fact, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) states that about 25% of businesses do not reopen after a disaster, with many more failing in the months or years following a disaster.

What Is Disaster Recovery?

Disaster recovery (DR) is a sequence of procedures designed to restore essential business activities as soon as possible, followed by restoring less critical workloads during a disruptive incident. This is known as disaster recovery (DR). In other words, the primary goal of DR is to minimize downtime and restart all systems and applications while reducing data loss.

Time is of the essence here since your losses increase by the minute. Everyone involved should rely on a well-defined plan and conduct each step correctly. Organizations usually resort to data protection techniques like backup or replication to almost instantly recover their data and, subsequently, operations.

Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery: Key Differences

Instead of thinking of business continuity and disaster recovery as two different strategies, it is better to view them as complementary. Disaster recovery is an integral part of any business continuity plan (BCP).

To further understand these concepts, think of your business as a ship struck by disaster and is now sinking. In this case, BCP is the emergency training you have conducted before setting sail, explaining what to do and where to go to those on board. DR will come into play when the catastrophe actually happens and everyone is rushing to complete their part so they can collectively mitigate the damage as fast as they can.

Think of DR as the practical implementation of BCP and, by combining them, your company can have an effective BCDR plan.

How to Build an Effective BCDR Plan

Organizations have varying structures, goals, and even weaknesses, which is why a BCDR plan should be personalized based on your requirements and strategies. It is also essential to consider that disasters differ in nature, and you should prepare yourself for all possible scenarios.

First things first, think about what you want to achieve with this plan. Obviously, minimizing the risk and impact of a disruption is your topmost priority. With that in mind, below are the steps you need to take to take your BCDR plan:

1.   Evaluate your organization and identify the weaknesses

Start by thoroughly assessing each department within your company and list the security gaps that can lead to unwanted downtime and address each one. If the discovered vulnerabilities require additional tools or updates, make sure to implement them.

Most organizations report the following security gaps:

  • Outdated hardware such as servers and computers
  • Older versions of operating systems and software
  • Unsafe network connections
  • Absence of modern data protection solutions

Employee behavior can also be a security vulnerability due to social engineering and ransomware attacks. Employee security training sessions can help raise awareness about online behavior.

2.   Choose the response team

No plan is complete without a team. Ensure that all members are fully aware of their roles and responsibilities. To do so, establish clear communication channels between those involved and keep everyone informed on the latest developments and updates.

Vital team members usually included in a BCDR plan are senior management executives, IT professionals, information security officers, heads of departments, and business partners.

3.   Identify critical data and workloads

The third step is to classify your data based on importance. In other words, you should determine which workloads are crucial for staying operational and generating revenue. For example, prioritize data subject to regulations, machines containing financial logs and billing systems, among others to avoid lengthy downtime, irreparable damage and compliance issues. Conduct frequent backups and safely store this data so you can quickly recover it in case of a disaster.

4.   Define RTOs and RPOs

Once you know which data and machines are critical for your organization’s continuity, you can then decide on recovery targets for each type of machine and data. One of the main steps is determining recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs). These two core parameters represent how much downtime and loss of data you can reasonably tolerate before services are restored.

5.   Test and review your plan regularly

The worst time to find out that you have an outdated and ineffective BCDR plan is after a disaster takes place. Conduct frequent and full-scale testing at regular intervals. Today’s data protection solutions allow you to verify if backups and replicas are usable. You can also run site recovery jobs, test failover to replica and failback to verify that systems can be restored and all the changes are preserved.

It is advisable to perform emergency drills to ensure that all participants are prepared and can complete their responsibilities as quickly as possible. Based on the results of your tests, you should be able to assess the plan and update to better meet your recovery objectives and adapt to new threats.

Business Continuity Plan Checklist

A business continuity checklist can come in handy when designing a BCDR plan:

  • Identify the disaster response team and key members.
  • Determine the departments and business services that could be affected by a disaster.
  • Conduct risk assessment and impact analysis.
  • Create a recovery and/or contingency plan for different services.
  • Specify recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs).
  • Ensure that your sensitive data is protected.
  • Choose a disaster recovery (DR) site for network and data failover.
  • Test your business continuity plan and eliminate vulnerabilities.

How to Achieve  Disaster Recovery Preparedness with NAKIVO

You can implement NAKIVO Backup & Replication as part of your BCDR plan for swift recovery during and after incidents. The solution can help you meet your organization’s RTOs and RPOs, apply the 3-2-1 backup strategy , and restore critical data and workloads.

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NAKIVO delivers all the functionalities needed to prepare for unplanned disruptions and recover swiftly:

  • Incremental and app-aware backups : Perform efficient backups while maintaining data consistency.
  • Immutable backups : Protect your backups and backup copies from ransomware encryption, deletion or modification by applying immutability in the cloud or Linux-based repositories.
  • Replication onsite and offsite : Create copies of your VMs and store them onsite or at a secondary location to ensure business continuity.
  • Advanced storage tiering : Eliminate a single point of failure by creating multiple backups and copies, storing them on different storage media and keeping at least one copy offsite.
  • Backup and replica verification : Test and verify the recoverability of your backups and replicas without disrupting the production environment.
  • Instant recovery : Quickly recover full VMs or individual files/app objects to minimize downtime.
  • Built-in DR orchestration : Automate workload failover or failback to VM replicas to continue operation in case of a disaster with Site Recovery .

Now more than ever, it is essential for organizations to prepare for any disaster that can impact their data and damage business operations. Having a well-developed BCDR plan can help you mitigate the risks, minimize downtime and ensure that your sensitive data is quickly recovered after a disruptive incident.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides numerous tools to ensure optimal data protection. With features like incremental and app-aware backups, instant recovery and ransomware protection, the NAKIVO solution allows you to safeguard your data and guarantee business continuity.

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Disaster recovery plan vs. business continuity plan: Is there a difference?

Person evaluating the difference between a disaster recovery plan and business continuity plan

Disaster recovery and business continuity are two terms often used interchangeably ' but doing so risks missing some of the key differences between the two strategies. To debunk the disaster recovery plan vs. business continuity plan debate, we look at:

  • What each means
  • Where the two are similar
  • How they differ
  • Why they are often confused
  • Whether your organization needs both

What is Business Continuity?

Definitions of a business continuity plan vary, as you'd expect; as with any corporate strategy term, there are different interpretations. But while definitions may diverge slightly, the general understanding is that a business continuity plan (BCP) is designed to ensure that your business can maintain its operations in the event of a disaster, whatever form that might take. On the other hand, a disaster recovery plan focuses on how your organization will recover and rebuild following any crisis. IT firm Phoenix NAP believes that 'Disaster Recovery (DR) versus Business Continuity (BC) are two entirely different strategies, each of which plays a significant aspect in safeguarding business operations.' Best practice business continuity plans follow a set pattern with some standard features. A comprehensive BCP will:

  • Identify the potential risks your business faces
  • Allocate responsibility, putting in place the teams you need to continue operations
  • Be built on best practice subsidiary and entity data
  • Make back-up arrangements for power, systems and communications
  • Prepare for recovery, identifying your disaster recovery team and the steps you will take to build back

This last point is where the potential 'grey area' between business continuity and disaster recovery starts to become apparent. Disaster recovery is a subset of business continuity planning and a vital element of a BCP. As well as planning for an immediate crisis-driven response, a business continuity plan should consider 'what happens next.' It's not just about how you deal with the immediate aftermath of a crisis, whether that's a cyber-attack, fire, flood, terrorist attack or any other human-made or natural disaster. It's about what you do next to restore operations on a more permanent footing. This is where the disaster recovery element of your planning comes in.

What is Disaster Recovery?

The disaster recovery plan and business continuity are very closely interlinked. Disaster recovery is the process of ' as you might imagine ' recovering after any business interruption or crisis. As InvenioIT puts it, 'A disaster recovery plan ...aims to answer the question: 'How do we recover from a disaster?'' What does a disaster recovery plan entail? It is typically a formal document, with details of steps needed to ensure you can recover rapidly from any disruption. IBM believes that a DR plan is more focused than a business continuity plan; as we said above, a subset of the BCP that focuses on how you recover your IT and systems to ensure operations return to normal as soon as possible. These formalized plans came into being in the 1970s. Businesses switched from being paper-based operations to ones dependent on systems and computer-based operations, technologies that require rapid response and clear action plans for contingency and recovery. Minimizing downtime by having recovery plans for your IT infrastructure and other operations means businesses can reduce the length and impact of any unexpected disruption.

Disaster Recovery Plan vs. Business Continuity Plan: How Do BCP and DR Plans Differ?

What is the difference between a disaster recovery plan and a business continuity plan? Given that you need to consider both business continuity and disaster recovery, it's worth exploring the two differences. Partly, as we mentioned above, the difference is about scope. The BCP is broad, while a DR plan will be more focused, looking specifically at how to get systems up and running in the aftermath of a disaster. An IT disaster can take many forms, from a localized hardware failure to a company-wide data breach ' and can have huge ramifications, with some 93% of businesses suffering an IT disaster going on to file for bankruptcy within a year . Another difference is in timing; the BCP should kick in as soon as a disruption is identified. Potentially, this means moving to back-up servers, power generators, remote working. On the other hand, the recovery plan tends to follow once the initial emergency response is in place, looking further ahead to determine how the business will rebuild and return to more normal operations. In either case, a written plan is vital, including a detailed business impact analysis that should be updated regularly. We've written before about the importance of keeping your business continuity plan up-to-date ' a lack of accurate data on your systems can significantly impact your ability to maintain operations and recover longer-term. Central to this is the need to maintain accurate information on all your entities and subsidiaries . Doing so enables you to methodically record the systems and technologies that will be impacted by an outage across the entirety of your organization. Once you're confident that you have captured all the applications and hardware you need to consider, your disaster recovery plan should include:

  • Detailed plans for restoring each of these critical applications and pieces of infrastructure
  • The timeframe for doing so
  • The people who need to be involved ' along with emergency contact details to ensure they can be contacted in the event of any communications interruption

The ramifications of a disaster can be significant for an organization, including lost income, reputational damage, regulatory breaches and associated penalties, financial or otherwise, and missed opportunities for business growth while recovery is prioritized. The 'disaster recovery plan vs. business continuity plan' debate, then, is slightly spurious ' because you clearly need both. Having defined plans, both to respond in the immediate aftermath of a crisis, and to recover following the initial crisis period, is essential. To help organizations with their planning, both for business continuity and disaster recovery, Diligent has long-standing expertise and a suite of solutions. The software supports businesses that manage entities, compliance and organizational documents, enabling companies to minimize and mitigate the risks posed by any disruption. You can find out more by getting in touch to request a demo.

Solutions Solutions

  • Board Management
  • Enterprise Risk Management
  • Audit Management
  • Market Intelligence

Resources Resources

  • Research & Reports

Company Company

Your data matters.

New York Tech

7 Benefits of Working with a Business Continuity Consultant

D id you know that 90% of small businesses fail within a year unless they can continue operations within five days after a disaster? Businesses without a disaster recovery plan in place will likely never re-open their doors.

If you don’t have a solid business continuity plan, this could be your fate. To avoid this problem and resume operations as normal during an emergency, hire a business continuity consultant.

Keep reading to learn the seven benefits of working with these professionals.

1. Regulatory Compliance

A business continuity consultant will help you meet regulatory requirements. Regulatory requirements are costly if you breach them.

Legislations are continuing to grow to support business mitigation strategies. Additionally, governance regulations emphasize reasonable care in the face of potential business risks.

There are many potential cyber-attacks and risks businesses should be aware of. When you are equipped to respond to these attacks, you protect more data.

Regulatory compliance compels businesses to prioritize cybersecurity and business continuity strategies. This can protect assets and your reputation as well.

Making risk assessments a habit can help your business stay clued up on the rules.

Keep in mind that even as cyberattacks become more sophisticated, insurance doesn’t protect your data. Insurance usually isn’t enough to cover all of the damages that come from a disaster.

2. Valuable Business Data

Business continuity plans generate a wealth of data to help you understand business operations. Some of the data you can collect includes:

  • Critical tasks
  • Recovery time objectives
  • Financial impact of disruptions

This data will help you prepare and recover from unexpected events. Your business will be equipped to navigate any challenge thrown your way.

Data is a valuable asset that can be used in various ways. When you analyze the data, you can make informed decisions that help drive your business toward long-term success.

Additionally, this valuable business data is more than you can get with backups. Most companies have a form of data backup, but this does no good if you don’t have access to it.

How can you access data in the event of an outage? If your business continuity plan leverages cloud technology and virtual servers, your business can run critical applications in the cloud. This also helps keep downtime to a minimum.

3. Minimize Downtime

Business continuity planning is a great investment because it can minimize downtime during a disruption.

A business continuing consultant helps you identify potential risks and develop contingency plans. These allow you to respond to an unexpected event and reduce downtime.

Your business can continue to operate during times of crisis. This also helps with maintaining your reputation because it keeps your customers happy.

Reducing downtime saves you a considerable amount of cash. When operations slow, you lose revenue, productivity decreases, and your overall business reputation takes a hit.

To avoid these negative consequences, minimize your downtime through business planning with a continuity consultant.

4. Rise in Trust and Confidence

A business continuity consultant increases trust and confidence in two ways. First, your customers are more trusting of your business. Second, your workforce has more confidence in their training during an emergency.

Your buyers aren’t likely to learn about a disaster until you have no choice but to tell them. They will notice if you are responding quickly to the problem.

Giving your customers a rundown of your protection strategy can help them feel more confident in your work. This can create an invaluable sense of trust.

Employees will also be more confident in their work through better training and effective responses. In the event of a crisis, employees can stay calm knowing how to handle the situation.

Business continuity and disaster recovery planning can be tailored to fit the goals of your business and the needs of your customers.

5. Strengthens Your Brand

Similarly to building trust and confidence, business continuity creates a lasting mark on your brand. People will remember your choices and what they represent to them as customers in the future.

For instance, how you handle production challenges or new communications platforms will say a lot about your business.

Brands survive on consistent values. A business continuity consultant will help you create a plan that ensures you don’t do anything to undermine your reputation.

6. Supply Chain Protection

Suppliers need to know about risks just as your company does. They should be completing assessments to create their own disaster plans as well.

A business continuity consultant will encourage you to talk to your suppliers about disaster planning. Ask suppliers about the protections they can offer your business, such as:

  • Cyber defenses
  • Remote business communications
  • Multiple locations for production

Business continuity management has to work in both directions. You need to understand the potential threats and how they impact day-to-day operations. Share your own business continuity plan with suppliers too.

7. Get Ahead of the Competition

Some companies miss out on business continuity; don’t be one of them. Other businesses may fail to prepare and take stock of resources, agility, skills, and weak spots.

Instead of future-proofing, they look at the present. This will eventually affect how they stay relevant.

You will have a huge advantage over the competitors if you can restore business operations while they are trying to figure things out. Getting your network back up and running quickly will make you stand out as a leader in the industry.

When times change, you’ll race ahead of the competition with a business continuity consultant. Focus on the longer term instead of only worrying about what is happening at the moment.

Work With a Business Continuity Consultant Now

A business continuity consultant will learn about your company and create a business continuity plan tailored to your needs. These plans help business operations and customer relations.

By keeping operations going, you keep employees working and keep your customers happy.

When choosing a business continuity consultant, find one who has experience helping multiple companies develop and implement a successful plan of action. In the event of a disaster, your business will be protected as much as possible.

Are you looking for more business advice? Keep coming back to our blog for regular new posts.

This article is published by NYTech in collaboration with Syndication Cloud.

7 Benefits of Working with a Business Continuity Consultant

ChatGPT is mixing languages or Answers are Wrong!

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Wow, it’s like the temperature was cranked up to 2, with the word token choice being from the very unlikely.

:blush:

What if you were to continue an older chat or a new chat, is the new behavior persistent for you?

You might check your custom instructions, now “customize ChatGPT”, and if you’ve never taken advantage of that before, you can place an instruction “ChatGPT only responds in high-quality Mexican Spanish language. Spanish language word usage is the only type of response that will be produced.”.

I just asked my friends, they are having the same issue (even in another country)!!

If it is affecting the language-localized alpha version of ChatGPT, with the interface in a different language, you can switch the user interface language under “settings” to English, or even use a browser plug-in such as Firefox’s “Language Switch”. See if that offers improvement or a gateway to different AI models.

I just asked ChatGPT Plus’ GPT-4 - and it seems to generate cohesive text for me. In this case recommending best software deployment practices…

Given your current operational setup and practices for your AI chatbot product, there are several areas of concern, especially from a configuration management perspective that prioritizes reliability, security, and uptime over the speed of agile development. Here are the key areas where your current practices may be falling short, along with improvement plans for each:

1. Direct Deployment to Production

Issue: Deploying directly to production after minimal validation introduces significant risks of introducing bugs, security vulnerabilities, and performance issues that can affect all your users instantaneously.

Improvement Plan:

  • Implement a more robust staging environment that mirrors your production environment as closely as possible. Use this for more extensive testing, including integration, performance, and security testing.
  • Adopt a phased rollout approach, where new updates are gradually deployed to a small percentage of users before a full rollout, allowing you to monitor for issues and minimize impact.

2. Short Validation Tests

Issue: Short validation tests may not be comprehensive enough to catch complex bugs or security issues, especially for a product with many features and continuous development.

  • Develop a more comprehensive testing strategy that includes automated unit tests, integration tests, end-to-end tests, and regression tests to ensure new changes do not break existing functionality.
  • Consider implementing continuous integration (CI) processes to automate testing and ensure that code changes are thoroughly validated before they are merged into the main codebase.

3. Outsourced Tech Support with Pregenerated Answers

Issue: Relying on pregenerated form answers for customer support can lead to unsatisfactory user experiences, especially for complex or unique issues that require more nuanced responses.

  • Enhance the training of your outsourced tech support team to handle a wider range of customer inquiries more effectively and to escalate complex issues appropriately.
  • Implement a feedback loop from tech support to the development team to identify common issues or feature requests, which can inform product improvements and reduce the volume of support requests.

4. Continuous Development Without Adequate Focus on Reliability and Security

Issue: While continuous development is beneficial for rapid feature rollout, it can compromise reliability and security if not managed carefully.

  • Prioritize the development of features and updates that enhance security and reliability, such as improved authentication mechanisms, data encryption, and redundancy systems.
  • Adopt a security-by-design approach, where security considerations are integrated into the software development lifecycle from the outset.

5. Lack of Configuration Management Best Practices

Issue: Without robust configuration management practices, changes to the system can become unmanageable over time, leading to configuration drift and inconsistencies that can affect system reliability and security.

  • Implement configuration management tools and practices to maintain control over system configurations, ensuring that all changes are documented, version-controlled, and reversible.
  • Regularly audit and review configurations to ensure compliance with security policies and operational best practices.

6. Potential Lack of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning

Issue: Direct deployment to production without adequate backup and disaster recovery plans increases the risk of significant downtime and data loss in the event of a failure.

  • Develop and implement a comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plan, including regular backups, failover mechanisms, and recovery procedures.
  • Conduct regular disaster recovery drills to ensure that the team is prepared to respond effectively to various scenarios.

While agile development practices offer flexibility and rapid iteration, they must be balanced with rigorous testing, configuration management, and a focus on security and reliability. By addressing these areas, you can significantly reduce risks and improve the overall quality and resilience of your AI chatbot product.

The problem is not only the language, it is that it is inventing words, if you ask it for fruits it talks about newspapers, and adds information with words that do not exist, it takes out Python codes even if you don’t ask for them, etc.

Please check this too: GPT is giving me really crazy answers Since today issue has been resolved

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