Disasters can occur in many forms at any time and typically without warning. If your organization is not prepared when disasters occur, you may lose all business functions costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost business and repairs.
Organizations cannot afford to lose business functions or experience network downtime as a result of disasters such as cyberattacks, natural disasters, pandemics, or equipment failures.
Understanding the differences between business continuity and disaster recovery will help you determine which one is best for your organization to help continue business functions and recover quickly from disasters.
Coeo understands how important it is for organizations to maintain business operations and has helped thousands of organizations with business continuity and disaster recovery to help them maintain operations during and after a disaster.
By the end of this article, you will understand what business continuity is, what disaster recovery is, the differences between the two, and which one is best for your organization.
What is business continuity?
Business continuity is an organization’s ability to maintain business functions and operations during and after a disaster.
Disasters such as cyberattacks, equipment failures, pandemics, and natural disasters can occur in any organization without warning.
Business continuity encompasses a set of plans and strategies to minimize downtime and ensure your organization maintains business functions during and after a disaster.
The goal of a business continuity strategy is to ensure at least minimal function for your organization to avoid losing as much business as possible.
A business continuity strategy establishes risk management processes and procedures that prevent disasters from disrupting mission-critical business functions.
What is disaster recovery?
Disaster recovery is a strategy that telecom providers create for their customers to identify the steps that are needed to get the network back up and running.
A disaster will cause significant or irreparable damage if no disaster recovery plan is in place. Some organizations in various industries are required to create and follow a disaster recovery plan and may experience legal consequences if not followed.
Not all telecom providers offer disaster recovery plans but most providers that do, cater these plans to the organization and the industry they are in so they can comply with the legal compliances placed in their industry.
The first step an organization must take to implement a disaster recovery plan is to review the risk factors, recovery goals, and the technology environment of the organization.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about business continuity and disaster recovery or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
The differences between business continuity and disaster recovery
Without a business continuity or disaster recovery strategy, a disaster can cause significant downtime to an organization’s network which can cost your organization hundreds of thousands of dollars when your organization is not able to function and if any repairs need to be made.
However, if you do not know the differences between the two, you may not know which strategy is the better fit for your organization. The differences between business continuity and disaster recovery include:
Objective
The first difference between business continuity and disaster recovery is their objective. The primary goal of business continuity is broader than disaster recovery since it aims to maintain critical business functions and operations.
To accomplish this, business continuity encompasses a broader set of strategies, plans, and procedures to improve the resiliency of business functions during and after a disaster.
On the other hand, disaster recovery has a much narrower objective since it typically only focuses on the IT infrastructure, systems, and data recovery processes during and after a disaster occurs.
The main objective of disaster recovery is to ensure the continuity of IT infrastructure by restoring IT systems and data to a functional state during and after a disaster.
Timeframe
Another difference between business continuity and disaster recovery is the timing of them and when they are used. Business continuity addresses immediate response and long-term recovery efforts after a disaster occurs.
Business continuity encompasses pre-event preparedness as well as recovery and response actions during and after a disruptive event. Additionally, business continuity plans typically cover a wide range of disaster scenarios from short-term to long-term outages.
Disaster recovery, on the other hand, primarily focuses on restoring IT infrastructure in the post-event recovery process.
In summary, business continuity encompasses pre and post-event preparedness and recovery while disaster recovery focuses primarily on restoring IT infrastructure post-event.
Is business continuity or disaster recovery a better fit for your organization?
Now you understand what business continuity is, what disaster recovery is, and the differences between the two. However, it is important to determine which strategy is the better fit for your organization.
If you are looking to prepare your organization for recovery when a disaster occurs, business continuity and disaster recovery may be good fits for your organization.
However, if your organization is looking to create strategies that maintain all business functions, business continuity is the right fit for your organization.
On the other hand, disaster recovery is a good fit if your organization is looking to focus only on the recovery of IT systems and infrastructure instead of business functions as a whole.
Additionally, it may be a good idea to implement both strategies into your organization so you can ensure you are fully prepared and legally compliant should a disaster occur.
Determining which strategy is a good fit for your organization
Now you understand what business continuity is, what disaster recovery is, the differences between the two, and which is the better fit for your organization. This will help you determine which strategy is the right fit for your organization.
Disasters can occur at any time, in many forms, and typically without warning. A disaster can cause detrimental consequences to an organization if they are not prepared to deal with the aftermath.
To avoid these consequences, it is important to be prepared with some kind of strategy to ensure your business can function during and before a disaster.
Coeo understands how important it is for an organization to maintain business functions and has helped thousands of organizations with their business continuity and disaster recovery plans.
We want you to understand the differences between business continuity and disaster recovery so you can determine which strategy is the better fit for your organization.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about business continuity and disaster recovery or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
Now that you understand the differences between business continuity and disaster recovery and which is better for your organization, read this article to learn how Coeo can help your organization with disaster recovery:
