Difference between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery


The world we now inhabit is not perfect. The news is constantly filled with stories of natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, and tsunamis that wipe away entire towns and put a halt to human economic activity when they pass through our globe. Natural disasters have a devastating impact on business operations across the world, in addition to disrupting the lives of ordinary people.

The need for organizations and service providers to prepare for the likelihood of disruptions to their operations and the services offered by technology has consequently increased dramatically. Having a number of different contingency plans available might help firms be more ready for the unexpected. Complete plans of action that a firm puts into motion in the case of an emergency are known by several different titles, but they all refer to the same thing: business continuity and disaster recovery. These safeguards cannot stop a tragedy from happening, but they can protect a business from harm if a catastrophe does occur.

What is Business Continuity Plan?

Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a type of strategic planning in which an organization determines how it will continue to function in the face of unforeseen disruptions to its services and operations and then tests that plan. Business continuity planning is a proactive approach to preparing for and recovering from disasters including floods, power outages, fires, and cyberattacks. An organization has to have a plan in place to keep running whether a crisis strikes or not.

A business continuity plan is a set of internal policies and processes designed to keep a firm running smoothly even after a catastrophic event, such as the full destruction of the building in which it is housed. To put it simply, operations management is the act of overseeing the various parts of a business that together ensure the firm can keep running smoothly and generate profits. Standardization, protocol development, and the design of recovery mechanisms are all examples of activities that might pave the way for immediate measures of mitigation.

What is Disaster Recovery Plan?

In the event of a disaster, company operations will immediately begin to implement the Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP). It focuses mostly on the instantaneous aftermath of an unexpected event. A disaster recovery plan is a set of procedures, guidelines, and regulations put in place by a company to recover quickly and effectively after experiencing a catastrophic event, such as the loss of electricity, a natural catastrophe, or a cyberattack. It's a method that's been tried and tested to handle unexpected events in the IT world, including a server going down, the power going out, a hacker breaking into the system, and so on.

Disaster recovery, as the name implies, comprises taking care of the immediate aftermath of a disaster and minimizing its effects as soon as feasible. The Disaster Recovery Plan is a more urgent reaction to limiting the impact of a disaster and restoring vital information technology systems, while the Business Continuation Plan (BCP) is more long-term and strategic in its approach to guaranteeing the continuity of operations. It is a part of a company's BCP and is used to ensure that the IT services of the organization continue to run smoothly even if anything unexpected happens.

Differences: Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan

The following table highlights how a Business Continuity Plan is different from a Disaster Recovery Plan -

Characteristics Business Continuity Plan Disaster Recovery Plan
Definition A business continuity plan, or BCP, is a set of procedures that may be followed to keep a company's activities running smoothly before, during, and after potentially disruptive events. A disaster recovery plan, or DRP, is a subset of business continuity planning that helps to reduce the effect of a catastrophe and speed up the recovery of essential IT systems.
Focus The business continuity plan (BCP) focuses on the operational aspects of a company to ensure that it can continue to run properly with no interruptions The Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) focuses on specific components of a business that guarantee the IT operations continue to run normally.
Strategy A BCP offers a method that is both strategic and long-term for returning to normal business operations. In order to better cope with unanticipated accidents, DRP employs a more tactical strategy.
Objective The objective of a business continuity plan is to ensure that an organization can continue to function both during and immediately after a crisis. The Disaster Recovery Plan is geared on lessening the effects of calamities and dealing with their immediate aftermath.

Conclusion

Disaster recovery planning and business continuity planning have some common ground, but their respective foci are distinct. Disaster recovery plans tend to concentrate on IT infrastructure, whereas business continuity plans span all aspects of the company.

Disaster recovery is just one part of the larger plan to keep the company running in the face of calamity. The disaster recovery plan and the business continuity plan (BCP) cover different ground, but the BCP is doomed to fail if it isn't supplemented with a strategy for quickly responding to interruptions in information systems.

Updated on: 13-Dec-2022

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