what's the difference

In this article, we’ll explore the differences between business continuity and disaster recovery (DR) — two must-have strategies for any company looking to avoid extended downtime. How does combining both practices improve resilience to potentially business-threatening threats?

What is Business Continuity

Business continuity (BC) is a planned set of measures that determines how a company will continue its operations in the event of a disruption. The plan temporarily eliminates an incident to maintain critical business functions until the threat is eliminated. The goal is to minimize downtime in the event of an incident.

Ideally, a company should have a disaster recovery plan for every possible disaster scenario. Incidents vary across geographies and industry verticals. Here are some of the most common:

• natural disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, forest fires, etc.);

• fires and floods in offices or server rooms on the premises of the enterprise;

• regional or local power outages;

• disease outbreaks and pandemics;

• theft, vandalism and similar criminal acts;

• cyber attacks (such as ransomware, DDoS attacks, phishing, APT attacks, etc.);

• attempts at fraud by senior management of the company;

• loss of connection and software failures;

• data center accidents;

• threats to the integrity and security of data (e.g. leakage or damage).

For example, a business continuity management plan for an office flood would include the following steps:

• ensuring the safety of employees and clients at the facility;

• ensuring the security of the company's main assets;

• ensuring the smooth operation of critical processes;

• providing employees with an alternative work location (e.g. a temporary office or the ability to work from home);

• taking measures to eliminate the source of the flooding and drain the office.

Preparing a response plan for every scenario you can imagine is, of course, impractical. Most companies only prepare plans for realistic events (for example, preparing for a tsunami is not wise for a company located inland).

What is Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery, or DR, is a planned set of measures that define how a company will restore its IT infrastructure after a disruptive event. While a business continuity plan aims to maintain business processes during an incident, DR focuses on restoring technology systems to their pre-failure state.

DR planning includes:

• preparedness (how well the company is prepared for an IT incident);

• response (how the company responds to an incident and ensures the availability of systems and data);

• recovery (what steps are taken to restore IT operations to their original state).

Disaster recovery is part of business continuity planning, and no BC strategy is complete without an IT recovery plan. DR prepares for the same disasters as BC (natural disasters, cyber attacks, insider threats, etc.), but focuses exclusively on restoring software and IT assets, such as:

• internal servers and other equipment;

• network infrastructure and endpoints;

• valuable business data;

• customer facing applications;

• external edge servers;

• mission critical applications and software;

• cloud computing assets.

While a BC plan also covers the above factors, a business continuity plan goes deeper into how a company will handle an incident (e.g., crisis management, employee safety, alternate offices, public relations strategies, etc.). These factors are not part of DR planning.

Let's look at the same flooding example to see how DR fits into the BC picture. If a sudden gust of water hits your office, a DR plan will help quickly:

• ensure that water does not damage IT assets;

• switch operations to backup equipment (on another floor or somewhere outside the office);

• synchronize data in a new IT environment;

• restore the operation of the main IT system as soon as the flooding problem disappears.

Most DR strategies involve switching operations from a primary system to an alternate site. Instead of setting up expensive on-site backup systems, you can rely on Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and create a cloud infrastructure that instantly takes over operations during a crisis.

Why Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Matter

Both business continuity and disaster recovery are vital to a company’s security. A BC plan ensures that you continue to provide services during and after an incident. And a disaster recovery plan ensures that critical systems remain online and that your IT systems are back up and running quickly.

Companies outline their BC and DR plans in two documents:

• Business Continuity Plan (BCP): This explains how a company plans to maintain core functions during and after a disruption. This document focuses on the operation of the business as a whole and explains how different teams should continue to operate under unusual circumstances.

• A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is dedicated to preventing loss of data and functionality of the IT infrastructure.

Some organizations use one document for both plans. Let's take a closer look at what is recommended to include in these plans, whether you write them together or separately.

Business Continuity Plan

What needs to be included in the BC plan:

• summary with glossary of terms;

• up-to-date risk analysis, vulnerability assessment and business impact analysis;

• a list that indicates where you keep copies of the plan, who needs access to the document, and links to any relevant files (such as an evacuation plan);

• all relevant legal, contractual, insurance and regulatory obligations;

• an overview of who, when and why worked on the plan;

• BC plan objectives;

• overview of geographic risks and factors;

• a list of the most important aspects of the business, along with an explanation of how quickly (and to what extent) they need to be resumed in the event of an incident;

• recommendations on how and when to use the plan;

• a thorough assessment of disaster scenarios, their likelihood and consequences (e.g. cost of repairs, disruption of services to end users, potential financial and legal consequences, etc.);

• an overview of the incident response team, as well as contact details for all staff who can be contacted in the event of a crisis;

• detailed incident prevention guidelines;

• instructions for identifying various threats;

• step-by-step response plans for each disaster scenario;

• any changes in management procedures that take effect during and after the incident;

• lists of additional offices, work-from-home guidelines and BYOD policies;

• schedule for review, testing and updating the BC plan;

• a clear communication plan with suppliers, third-party partners and the media;

• metrics and key performance indicators to measure impact and recovery stages (e.g. maximum tolerable downtime (MTD));

• instructions for training team leaders and individual employees.

Disaster Recovery Plan

What needs to be included in a DR plan:

• a statement of the intent and objectives of the plan;

• an overview of who created the plan and when;

• a thorough analysis of the IT infrastructure, networks, and data you are protecting with your disaster recovery plan;

• inventory of all relevant equipment and software;

• in-depth analysis of IT risks;

• overview of the current technology stack of the system;

• recommendations for using the plan;

• RTO and RPO data (Recovery Time Objective indicates the amount of time it takes to restore applications and data, while Recovery Point Objective indicates how often the team backs up data under normal circumstances);

• a list of all personnel responsible for implementing the disaster recovery plan;

• Step-by-step instructions on how to restart, reconfigure, re-host, and restore systems during a crisis;

• a list of all the tools needed to perform DR (plus instructions on how to use them correctly);

• all necessary means of authentication and all required passwords;

• detailed instructions on incident prevention and proactive system protection (e.g. using anti-malware tools, setting up IDS, creating daily backups, etc.);

• mission-critical functions that are down in the event of an IT system failure;

• all necessary information about the IT infrastructure that will take over control in the event of an incident;

• schedule of planned strategy reviews and updates;

• instructions for training employees responsible for managing the IT system and leading the disaster recovery process (penetration testing is a common way companies test the readiness of their disaster recovery team).

Key Differences Between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

The table below explains the key differences between business continuity and disaster recovery:

How Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Combine

Some companies prefer to plan BC and DR in isolation, while others focus on one or the other. Both approaches are not ideal.

Business continuity and disaster recovery work best when you develop both plans in tandem and handle unplanned events with both strategies. DR should be a subset of a broader business continuity plan that manages the “mitigation” and “recovery” portions of the response procedure.

An integrated approach ensures coverage of all business areas in the event of a disaster. Business continuity ensures availability of business functions for end users, which eliminates loss of income. Disaster recovery will allow the team to restore normal operation of the IT infrastructure as quickly as possible.

Using these two practices together has the following benefits:

• Whether the organization is facing a minor glitch or a full-scale disaster, the team has a clear plan of action to respond in the best possible way;

• no matter what happens, you minimize downtime;

• your team won't have to improvise at any stage of the incident response process;

• the DR plan will better align with the interests of the business;

• An integrated approach reveals weaknesses that a team working solely on one strategy may miss;

• Employees receive clear instructions on how to deal with worst-case scenarios to reduce stress levels in normal circumstances and reduce panic during incidents.

Conclusion

Business continuity and disaster recovery are two must-have practices for any security-conscious company. There is always a risk of bad incidents happening, and responding to them without proper BC and DR planning can be disastrous. Incidents often paralyze IT systems, disrupt employees, and halt all revenue-generating operations. How long can your business tolerate such circumstances? Probably not very long, so start thinking about insurance policies before an unplanned event can seriously damage your profits and reputation.