A business continuity and disaster recovery plan is a broad guide designed to keep a business running, even in the event of a disaster. This plan focuses on the business as a whole, but drills down to specific scenarios that might create operational risks. With business continuity planning, the aim is to keep critical operations functioning, so that your business can continue to conduct regular business activities even under unusual circumstances.
When followed correctly, a business continuity plan should be able to continue to provide services to internal and external stakeholders, with minimal disruption, either during or immediately after a disaster. A comprehensive plan should also address the needs of business partners and vendors.
A disaster or data recovery plan is a more focused, specific part of the wider business continuity plan. The scope of a disaster recovery plan is sometimes narrowed to focus on the data and information systems of a business. In the simplest of terms, a disaster recovery plan is designed to save data with the sole purpose of being able to recover it quickly in the event of a disaster. With this aim in mind, disaster recovery plans are usually developed to address the specific requirements of the IT department to get back up and running—which ultimately affects the business as a whole.
Depending on the type of disaster that occurs, the plan could involve everything from recovering a small data set to an entire datacenter. Most businesses are heavily reliant on information technology, which is why the disaster recovery plan is such an important part of successful business continuity planning.
A disaster recovery plan should encompass all the procedures, technologies, and objectives necessary for making a rapid recovery after a disaster. At minimum, your plan should account for the following:
Contact details: specifically for those who developed the plan, as well as any key recovery personnel
Plan objectives: describes the overall aim of the plan and what it will try to accomplish
Risk assessment: this involves conducting a thorough assessment of disaster scenarios, their likelihood, and their impact
Prevention: steps and systems for helping prevent each of the disasters listed, such as implementing anti malware to prevent cyberattacks
Response: this section should detail how the business will respond to each disaster to minimize the impact
Contingencies: a list of secondary backup assets, such as a backup office location to be used in the event of a disaster
Communication: protocols for maintaining communication with recovery personnel, such as a text alert system
Recovery technologies: all systems currently implemented, or those that should be, in support of recovery
Recovery time objective (RTO): this refers to your desired timeframe for completing recovery before the situation becomes critical
Recovery point objective (RPO): RPO refers to the age of data backups—it’s the desired recovery point for restoring data from a backup
Recovery protocols: these protocols should identify who does what in the event of a disaster, including clearly defined roles and how you expect recovery personnel to communicate with each other
Vendors, suppliers, and other third parties: your plan should include a list of any parties who may be needed to support recovery, as well as their emergency contact details
Your business continuity and disaster recovery plan should include all the above facets to help ensure that it remains accurate, as you never know when disaster might strike.