Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity are closely linked practices that help an organisation remain operational or get an organisation operational again in the most efficient time.

In the modern world where organisations of all sizes utilise technology to do business, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity is not optional, it’s a requirement. Should the organisation suffer from natural disaster, a fire, lose access to an office or building, or even suffer a cyber-attack like ransomware, the organisation needs to know how to respond. Every hour and day lost is lost revenue, and some cases where there has been a lack of planning has seen organisations unable to become operational and has caused the business to close.

The business continuity and disaster recovery plans are there to minimise the effects of outages and disruptions to your business, ensure Senior Management and all employees understand what to do in certain situations. Getting your business operational as quickly as possible reduces the reputational risk, mitigates the lost revenue compared to longer downtime, reduces the risk of data loss and mitigating many emergency situations by identifying these in advance and having working plans.

What’s the difference between Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity?

Disaster Recovery is a more reactive method of protecting your IT systems and Data against failure or damage. This takes place post incident and is about restoring access to systems and data. This can vary depending on the scale of the incident from minutes to days or even weeks. Reports of some organisations that have suffered ransomware attackers have taken months to fully recover, so Disaster Recovery required a well-planned approach to bringing your systems and data back online.

Business Continuity is more proactive method that identifies the risks, followed by the procedures and processes that must be implemented. Business continuity focusses on the organisation where Disaster recovery is about the technology. The Disaster Recovery is part of that business continuity plan.