Business Continuity Plan vs. Disaster Recovery Plan: What’s the Difference?

As a small business owner, you’ll likely face certain challenges and obstacles along your journey.

With the right plan, you give yourself the best chance at success.

However, there are certain things that may not spring to mind immediately when you’re thinking about a business plan — disasters, for example.

There are two common types of plans that you’ll want to have in case disaster strikes: a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan. While these may have similarities, the scope of the two plans is completely different.

Let’s look at what both types of plans entail and why they’re important.

What is a Business Continuity Plan?

A Business Continuity Plan, or BCP for short, is a comprehensive strategy designed to ensure an organization can continue its essential operations during and after a disruptive event.

A BCP covers not only IT systems and data recovery but also all aspects of the business required to maintain business functions, such as:

• • Personnel
  • Physical facilities
  • Critical processes
  • Resources

This plan ensures that businesses can navigate natural disasters, cybersecurity breaches, and any other critical incidents.

A BCP is comprised of various elements, including:

• Crisis management – This component involves high-level strategies for dealing with crises, such as establishing an incident response team and setting up communication channels for key stakeholders.
• Business Impact Analysis – BIA is a crucial step in BCP, as it identifies critical business processes, their dependencies, and the financial and operational impacts of their disruption.
• Incident response procedures – BCP includes detailed procedures for managing various types of incidents, ensuring a coordinated response and minimizing confusion during a crisis.

Why is a Business Continuity Plan Important?

There are three primary reasons why a business continuity plan is a must-have:

1. It protects business reputation – A well-executed BCP helps maintain customer trust and confidence, as your organization can continue serving its customers without significant disruptions. This can be particularly important for service-oriented industries.
2. It minimizes financial loss – By preventing extended downtime, a BCP reduces financial losses that may result from interruptions to your operations. It allows for quicker recovery, reducing the financial impact of disasters.
3. It provides operational resilience – The importance of a BCP lies in operational resilience. It enables your organization to adapt, withstand, and recover from various disruptions, maintaining its mission and the trust of stakeholders. Operational resilience ensures that your business can continue delivering its services and products even during challenging times, reinforcing its long-term viability.

What is a Disaster Recovery Plan?

A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is a subset of the BCP that focuses specifically on the recovery of IT systems and data after a disaster or disruption. DRP is primarily concerned with the restoration of digital assets, ensuring that an organization can recover its IT infrastructure, applications, and data in a timely and efficient manner.

DRP components may include:

• Data backup and recovery – This involves regular backups of critical data and the procedures for recovering that data in case of data loss or corruption. This can include on-site and off-site backups.
• System recovery – DRP outlines the strategies and methods for restoring IT systems, including hardware and software components, to their pre-disaster state or as close to it as possible.
• IT continuity – This component of DRP ensures that essential IT services can continue functioning during and after a disaster, minimizing IT-related downtime.

Why is it Important?

Just like the business continuity plan, there are three primary reasons why disaster recovery plans are important to have for businesses:

1. Data protection – DRPs safeguard critical data, ensuring it can be restored and accessed following data loss or system failures. Data is often one of an organization’s most valuable assets.
2. Minimized downtime – The quick recovery of IT systems reduces downtime, enabling your business to continue its operations promptly. Downtime can result in lost revenue and customer dissatisfaction.
3. Business continuity – Beyond compliance, a well-prepared DRP ensures business continuity. It helps the organization adapt to disruptions, maintain customer trust, and continue operations, irrespective of the cause. This is vital for the long-term stability and success of the business.

Primary Differences Between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plans

As you can see, these two types of plans share some similarities — in a sense, a disaster recovery plan is a smaller section of an overall business continuity plan.

To help you understand, here are the main differences between the two.

Scope – A business continuity plan covers a broader range of business functions, including operational, financial, and customer-related aspects. In contrast, a disaster recovery plan is primarily focused on IT systems and data recovery. A BCP is concerned with the overall well-being of the business, addressing every aspect that can affect its ability to function. DRP, on the other hand, focuses on a specific subset, namely IT operations.

Objectives – A BCP aims to keep the overall business functioning, with a focus on customer satisfaction and financial stability. It’s not just about technology; it’s about people, processes, and facilities working together to ensure the business continues to operate effectively. A DRP, in contrast, concentrates on minimizing IT-related downtime and data loss — its primary objective is to get the IT systems back up and running as quickly as possible.

Components – A BCP includes crisis management, business impact analysis, and incident response procedures, among others. Meanwhile, a DRP mainly consists of data backup, system recovery, and IT continuity strategies. While a BCP covers a wide array of business functions, a DRP focuses on a narrower technical aspect.

Dependencies – A BCP may rely on a DRP for IT recovery, but a DRP depends on a BCP to provide the broader context and strategy for overall business continuity. A DRP’s effectiveness is enhanced when it operates within the framework of a well-defined BCP. A BCP sets the stage for the entire organization’s resilience, while DRP is a vital subset of that plan.

Applicability – A BCP is relevant for all aspects of the organization, encompassing not only IT but also personnel, facilities, and critical processes. It’s applicable to the entire organization and its stakeholders. In contrast, a DRP is primarily IT-centric and is specific to the technology and data aspect of the business. It focuses on ensuring the integrity and availability of digital assets.

Triumph Modular’s Disaster Relief Checklist Can Help You Prepare

Disaster relief and business continuity are both important — it can be easy to lose track of what you need to protect your business.

Our Disaster Recovery Checklist removes the guesswork and ensures that you know what to do before, during, and after disaster strikes. It also allows you to keep track of the steps you’ve completed to ensure that you have a well-rounded and thought-out disaster relief plan.

Download the Disaster Recovery Checklist today!