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5 Key Differences Between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

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8 June 2021

Many professionals find comfort in rhythm and routine as they go about their day, believing that their workplace will remain unchanged and unaffected from one day to the next. The pandemic has taught us all otherwise, as unexpected events can upset and interrupt business operations in just a short period of time. 
As a business owner or someone in a decision making position, it is crucial for you to plan and prepare for such disruptions ahead of time. You need robust IT security strategies and a plan of action to keep your fundamental business functions sound and solid even in an event of a threat. 
This is where business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) become crucial. They work towards minimising damage to your organisation whilst preparing you for unexpected shocks. Both disciplines can put in place contingency plans to minimise the impact of a catastrophic event and effectively implement damage control measures.
This means, even with interruptions, disruptions, outages, cyber attacks or data breaches, your business will retain its ability to operate and deliver its products and services on time, with as minimal impact as possible.
When it comes to it though, what are the differences between business continuity vs disaster recovery?
Let’s find out!

Understanding Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning

While both fields are equally important to safeguard business information, they are often considered to be synonymous. Though they share similarities, they are quite different from each other. 
There are some crucial differences in business continuity and disaster recovery, and as someone in a leadership position, it’d be best for you to understand these key points of distinction. 

Business Continuity 

BC is all about having a solid plan of action for when it all goes wrong. It ensures that your business continues to function and operate, even if you are affected by an unexpected disaster. Business continuity management consists of procedures, steps and processes that you implement to ensure that your business operations continue working as normal, even under critical circumstances. 
It means walking the often fine line between total shutdown and carrying on as best you can. It is based on a persistent analysis and quarantine of critical operations. 

Disaster Recovery

Put simply, DR is a subset of business continuity management and planning. Disaster recovery planning concerns restoring, re-establishing and reinstalling all the vital support systems. 
IT assets, communications and hardware are the top three systems that need to be addressed first. The main goal of DR is to reduce business downtime and concentrate on restoring technical operations as soon as possible and get everything up and running in no time.

Business Continuity vs Disaster Recovery – Key Differences

For your business to function smoothly, you need the support of both DR and BC strategies to keep your systems up and running. When these disciplines work in harmony, you have a better chance of restoring your IT infrastructure quickly. 
Take a look at the major differences between disaster recovery and business continuity to see how both plans need to be in place to be prepared for any disaster. 

  • Core Functions

Business continuity primarily concerns itself with keeping business functional during a disaster, a cyber attack or any catastrophic event. On the other hand, disaster recovery deals with restoring systems to normal, getting IT infrastructure up to speed and fixing data access issues after a disaster has struck. 
While continuity planning deals with keeping things running even under duress, disaster management works on returning the business environment to normal in an expeditious manner.

  • Employee Safety

Disaster recovery strategies may have an element of planning for employee safety as an additional measure. This means, depending on your industry, stocking up on emergency supplies or conducting regular fire drills. 
When combined, these planning measures together facilitate business maintenance on an operational level to ensure that all your employees stay safe and sound.

  • Different Goals

Both DR and BC have different goals. While business continuity plans work towards reducing downtime, disaster recovery plans help curb inefficient and problematic system functions. In the event of a business shock, combining these two plans makes for robust and swift information restoration.

  • Scale of Operation

Disaster recovery is accounted for by most businesses as a part of their general business continuity planning and strategy. This makes DR one step or a key subset of a much bigger and comprehensive process that protects your business and IT environment from all contingencies.

Having Both Strategies Is Important

By now, we’ve established that the terms disaster recovery and business continuity are not interchangeable. Both these strategies play a key role in protecting your business from external threats. 
In case of a disaster, it is better to seek assistance from an all-around IT support company like Redpalm, as we can work with you to make your business environment whole again. 
We also work with companies to update their existing strategies with the latest technical solutions that ensure complete safety and hassle-free restoration of critical information and business data. 

Make Your Business and IT Robust With Redpalm

When we think about a business-wide informational disaster, business continuity planning is the first thing we think about. However, a disaster recovery plan is vital for organisations that simply cannot function without critical business data and information. 
Therefore, it is best to apply and execute both plans simply to cover all bases. At Redpalm, we work with you to plan ahead of time for unexpected events that could impact your business functions and operations. 
With our robust cloud computing solutions and backup and recovery capabilities, we protect crucial business information while minimising loss of data and downtime. 
Reach out to us at info@redpalm.co.uk or give us a call on 0333 006 3366 to book your IT consultation right away!

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