Business Continuity Plan vs Disaster Recovery Plan: What’s the difference and why do you need them? As businesses embrace digital transformation and become increasingly reliant on IT systems, the need for effective business continuity and disaster recovery plans has become more critical than ever.
The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 has further underscored the importance of maintaining business continuity in the face of unexpected disruptions. In this article, we will explore the differences between business continuity plans (BCPs) and disaster recovery plans (DRPs), their purpose, and how to approach developing them.
Business Continuity Plan – Definition and Purpose
A business continuity plan (BCP) is a proactive approach to preventing and recovering from any interruption to business operations. It aims to identify potential risks and threats, evaluate the impact on critical business functions, and prioritize the recovery needs of the organization.
The focus is on ensuring that essential business functions can continue with minimal disruption during and after a crisis. The primary purpose of a BCP is to provide a framework for the continuity of operations.
By having a plan in place, organizations can minimize potential downtime and revenue loss and protect their reputation. The BCP also addresses the preparation, response, and recovery phases of operations in the face of a crisis.
Approach and Steps
Developing a BCP requires a multidisciplinary approach involving various departments and stakeholders. It involves the following steps:
1.
Perform a Risk Assessment: Identify potential risks and threats to critical business functions and assets. These may include natural disasters, pandemics, supply chain disruptions, cyber-attacks, or data breaches.
2. Establish a Planning Committee: Form a team responsible for developing, reviewing, and updating the BCP.
The team should include representatives from all departments and stakeholders. 3.
Prioritize Recovery Needs: Determine the most critical business functions and prioritize their recovery. Establish recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) for each function.
4. Gain Management Commitment: Ensure the management team is committed to the BCP and willing to provide the necessary resources and budget.
5. Plan Implementation: Develop policies, procedures, and protocols to guide the organization’s response and recovery efforts.
6. Testing: Test the BCP by running drills and simulations to identify any gaps and failures.
Regular testing is critical to ensure that the BCP remains effective. 7.
Evaluation: Review and update the BCP regularly to ensure it remains relevant and effective.
Disaster Recovery Plan – Definition and Purpose
A disaster recovery plan (DRP), on the other hand, focuses on the immediate impact of an incident on IT-oriented systems. It is a tactical approach that outlines the actions required to mitigate the damages of a disaster, specifically the recovery of critical IT systems and applications.
The primary purpose of a DRP is to minimize the downtime of critical systems and applications in the face of a disaster to prevent damage to business continuity. A DRP also addresses the preparation, response, and recovery phases of operations in the face of a crisis, just like a BCP.
Approach and Steps
Developing a DRP involves a risk management approach, similar to that used in developing a BCP. The following are steps involved:
1.
Set of Protocols, Procedures, and Policies: Develop a set of protocols, procedures, and policies to guide the organization response to a disaster. 2.
Mitigating Disasters: Identify disaster risks and develop mitigating actions to minimize their impact. 3.
Determining the Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD) and Recovery Targets: Establish an MTD, which is how long the organization can afford to sustain a disruption before it results in significant loss. Define recovery targets which is how quickly the organization needs to recover.
4. Criticality Analysis: Analyze the organization’s IT infrastructure to determine the most critical systems and applications.
Establish the order in which they should be recovered following a disaster. 5.
Recovery Strategies: Develop recovery strategies for each critical system and application. Establish documented procedures to guide rapid restoration.
6. Telecommunication Management: Assign responsibility for managing telecommunication systems and ensuring connectivity and restoration of services.
7. Utility management: Assign responsibility for ensuring that utility services supporting IT systems are restored and maintained.
Business Continuity Plan vs Disaster Recovery Plan: What’s the difference and why do you need them? Both BCPs and DRPs are essential in ensuring the continuity of business operations before, during, and after a crisis.
A BCP is proactive, focusing on business continuity, while a DRP is reactive, focusing on the recovery of critical IT systems. The two plans must complement each other to ensure a comprehensive approach to maintain business continuity.
Developing BCP and DRPs require a multidisciplinary approach. It must involve a risk management approach, establishing a recovery order, setting recovery objectives, and developing recovery strategies.
It is also crucial to regularly update, test, and evaluate each plan to ensure they remain relevant and effective. In conclusion, developing BCP and DRP is vital to reducing the negative impacts of downtime on businesses during a crisis significantly.
While they may differ in their approach and focus, the two plans complement each other, providing a comprehensive approach to ensure a business’s continuity during and after a disaster. In the face of unexpected disruptions, businesses need to have plans in place for quickly and effectively addressing those disruptions.
Two such plans include the Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and the Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP), both of which deal with ensuring business continuity. Although they may appear similar in focus, scope, and function, there are notable differences between these two plans.
This article will delve into the differences between the BCP and the DRP.
Approach
One of the major differences between a BCP and a DRP is the approach they take towards dealing with disruptions. A BCP is a strategic and long-term plan that focuses on preventing potential disruptions and ensuring the continuity of business operations.
The plan integrates prevention measures, crisis management, and proactive decision-making strategies to deal with potential risks and to minimize the impact of any potential disruptions. A BCP is designed to restore normal business operations as quickly as possible.
In contrast, a DRP is more tactical and short-term in its approach. The focus is on immediate response to an unplanned incident, such are system failures, security breaches, natural disasters, and power outages.
The DRP is put in place to take action once an incident has occurred or when it is inevitable. It is primarily IT-oriented and focuses on mitigating damages and restoring operations to avoid prolonged downtime.
Focus
While the fundamental objectives of the BCP and DRP overlap, they have different primary focuses. The primary focus of a BCP is to ensure the continuity of business operations.
This includes dealing with anything that could threaten business operations such as natural disasters, extended power outages, security breaches, equipment failures or employee absences. A BCP looks beyond IT systems to proactively maintain all critical functions including, supply chains management, human resources, customer service, and finance departments.
A DRP, on the other hand, focuses on the recovery of information systems critical for the continuity of business operations. It is primarily geared towards restoring IT operations, including hardware, servers, and software affected by disasters and failures.
The plan designates priority for getting IT systems up and running as quickly as possible to avoid prolonging system downtime.
Steps Involved
Both the BCP and DRP require extensive planning and evaluation of processes and procedures and involve several steps. The following are the steps involved in a BCP and DRP.
BCP Steps:
1. Risk Assessment: The first step in developing a business continuity plan is identifying areas of risk and potential disruptions such as natural disasters, cyber-attacks, and power outages.
2. Prioritizing Recovery Needs: Determine the most critical business functions and prioritize their recovery.
Conduct a business impact analysis to establish recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) for each function. 3.
Developing the Plan: Develop policies, procedures, and protocols for business operations, including prevention, response, and recovery plans. 4.
Test and Evaluation: Regularly test the plan through drills and simulations, and evaluate the results to identify any areas needing improvement. DRP Steps:
1.
Risk Assessment: Assess risks to vital information systems and related hardware, such as servers and network infrastructure. 2.
Developing the Plan: Develop the DRP focusing on recuperating essential IT systems and vital information to allow management to report incidents effectively, mainly centered on mitigating data loss. 3.
Criticality Analysis: Evaluate IT infrastructure to determine the most critical systems and applications that need to be recovered after a disaster. 4.
Mitigation: Identify disaster risks and develop mitigating actions to minimize their impact. 5.
Telecommunication and Utility Management: identifying all connections and telecommunication systems so that the DRP team can assess the impact on communications following a disaster or serious outage. 6.
Recovery Strategies: Develop recovery strategies for each critical system and application. Test performance, measure results, and revise accordingly.
While the BCP focuses on the continuity of an entire organization, the DRP has a narrower focus on the recovery of critical IT systems within an organization. The criticality analysis of an organization’s IT infrastructure is essential to identify the most critical systems and applications and establish the order in which they should be recovered following a disaster.
In conclusion, while the BCP and DRP may appear similar, they have different primary objectives and approaches. Developing a successful BCP and DRP involves identifying potential risks, assessing their impacts on the organization, and prioritizing the recovery of essential business functions and IT operations.
By developing a proactive BCP and a reactive DRP, businesses can protect their operations against potential disasters, recover quickly, and maintain their reputation. In conclusion, a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) are crucial for ensuring business continuity in the face of disruption.
While both plans aim to minimize downtime and protect a business’s reputation, they differ in their approach, scope, and focus. The BCP takes a proactive approach, focusing on the continuity of the entire organization, including critical functions like supply chain management, finance departments, and customer service.
In contrast, the DRP takes a reactive approach, focusing on the recovery of critical information systems following an unplanned incident. Developing both plans involves assessing risks, prioritizing recovery needs, developing strategic procedures, and testing and evaluation.
By implementing effective BCP and DRP strategies, businesses can minimize potential losses, quickly recover operations, and maintain their reputation.