What’s The Difference Between DR And BCP?
What is the difference between Disaster Recovery (DR) and a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)? This is a question that we, AirIT, get asked fairly frequently. It’s no surprise considering how much they entwine with each other. That’s why we thought we would simplify the difference to ensure that your business knows the exact strategy you need to put in place.
The main thing we hope you take away from reading this blog is that it’s really important to have looked into both for your company – a BCP consists of multiple plans of action to ensure business operations continue in the event of an unexpected incident, whereas a disaster recovery plan is only one element that focuses on recovering after a disastrous event such as a cyber-attack. This is included with a BCP.
However, whilst they both include different features, they can be individually tailored to fit your business needs and budget.
Now we’re going to take 5-minutes to look at them both in more detail.
Business Continuity
Typically, an IT Business Continuity Plan (BCP) includes a strategy, which involves implementing a solution that can withstand disruption to your business caused by external incidents. For example, cyber-attacks, illnesses and natural disasters. Therefore, you won’t experience loss in downtime nor fall behind competitors.
The solution may contain 6 strategies, including:
- Occupant Emergency Plan – This is a plan as to how your staff will respond in the event of a disaster
- Operational Plan – Outline a strategy as to how your business operation will continue in the event of a disaster
- Cyber Incidents Plan – A plan as to how a cyber incidence is managed and ensure that your business will remain secure during a disastrous event
- Disaster Recovery Plan – A precautious plan to ensure data will be recoverable in the event of an incident
- Business Recovery Plan – The process of creating systems of prevention and recovery to deal with potential threats to a company
- Communications Plan – This ensures that all staff members will be able to communicate in the event of disaster
It has been known that some companies rely on business insurance to cover everything in the event of a disaster when, in reality, insurance only protects your business from damage to your current individual equipment.
By having a BCP, you’ll be protected:
- Financially – Suffer no loss in continuous profit from loss in business hours
- Reputationally – No damage to reputation if the incident was a cyber related issue
- Legally – Your business is legally covered by following industry compliance
- Operationally – Your business won’t experience a tremendous amount of downtime from being non-operational
Having a Business Continuity Plan should be your top priority as it will protect you from very real possible events that are out of your control. Not to mention protecting both your staff members and your business.
Disaster Recovery
Disaster Recovery is a stand-alone service found in a Business Continuity Plan, acting as the response component in the event of a disaster – Simple!
It includes all the objectives and procedures for a quick recovery after a cyber-attack, lost data or damaged hardware.
Here are some things that are included with a Disaster Recovery Plan:
- Technology and equipment recovery – Ruined equipment will be replaced
- Agreed Recovery Time Objective (RTO) – Both companies will agree on the time it take for data to be recovered
- Agreed Recovery Point Objective (RPO) – Both companies will agree on the data of recovery from the disaster
- Regular Recovery testing – Offer regular testing to ensure we can retrieve your data in an emergency
- 24/7 Support and monitoring – Monitor your network 24/7 to stop a stop a threat in its tracks
- Full Disaster Recovery Plan – Align the above technique to your current disaster plan making it whole
There’s no denying that data is vital to your business, that’s why it’s important to have these processes in place to ensure that your business doesn’t end up on the local news page and survives a disaster with minimal damage.
