Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery – What's the Difference? Every business venture will eventually have obstacles they encounter that could potentially destroy their business. The question though, is are you going to prepare for them?
Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery – What’s the Difference? Every business venture will eventually have obstacles they encounter that could potentially destroy their business. The question though, is are you going to prepare for them?
In order to know how to prepare for obstacles and make an informed decision about what is the best option for your company – on any particular problem – you need to understand the different options.
In terms of data loss, whether it comes from a natural disaster, fire, theft, or something else; it’s important to understand the differences between business continuity and disaster recovery, and how using either one can affect your investment and productivity when you have a data loss encounter.
The Main Difference Between Recovery and Business Continuity:
In Southern Missouri, one of the things we deal with during the spring and summer months are tornadoes. If you had disaster recovery in place for your data, and a tornado hit your business and destroyed it, then disaster recovery would protect you data.
Once your insurance paid for replacement computers and servers, we would be able to restore your data to that hardware.
If you had business continuity in place, even though your business place was destroyed, your data would be almost instantly available to continue operations, albeit possibly at a different location.
Think of business continuity as the precautionary measures already set up so that business can continue operating.
The main difference between these methods is that business continuity is a plan of action for any obstacles that could prevent business from continuing, while disaster recovery is just the restoration of data once you have the equipment to access the data.
Business Continuity
The idea of business continuity requires that you have a plan and a set of guidelines to follow, so that when problems inevitably arise, they can be dealt with and production can continue in an orderly fashion. There are three components to business continuity:
- Resilience: A functioning business structure needs to be resilient in the case of data interruption. This calls for alternate locations and equipment if current equipment is destroyed. Functions and infrastructure should be designed for business to continue operating during disruptions.
- Recovery: In the event that a disaster does happen and information goes missing, there should be a process to recover information, to alternate equipment or to the cloud.
- Contingency: Before production ever starts there must be contingencies in place for varying aspects of business continuation. This might include: temporary staffing, staff working from homes or remotely, Contractors might need to be setup to provide needed services to your customers, and many other things. This is the backup plan and the goal should be for business to resume as soon as possible, potentially within hours, not days.
Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery can be considered a sub-set of the business continuity plan. The idea is that after a disaster has occurred, I.T. Services can be depended on to regroup information and restructure the I.T. side of the business.
Disaster Recovery could be thought of as the technical business functionality plan, dealing with hardware and data; while business continuity would be a fully encompassing plan that deals with every aspect of business operations and continuity of people being able to work.
In these days. people are reliant on computers, so continuity.
Summary
It’s up to you to prepare your business for success. When it comes to technology, its up to us to help you explain what you need to do. Contact us today to learn more about I.T. Services, Technology how we can help in your business recovery and business continuity preparation.
