Distinguishing between Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and Disaster Recovery (DR)
Two programs that large corporations use to make sure that the business will not be affected by a natural disaster are Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and Disaster Recovery (DR). They are two completely different programs and involve different techniques.
What is Business Continuity Planning?
Many different types of calamities and natural disasters can interfere with the activities of a business. In order to neutralize the effect that they may have on the financial health of the company, it is important to have a plan in place just in case something does happen. This is called Business Continuity Planning and as the name suggests it is a plan to ensure that the business is able to continue. The crisis does not have to be a catastrophic event, such as a major flood or an earthquake. It can be the death or the sudden resignation of one of the owners or major shareholders.
What is Disaster Recovery?
Disaster Recovery takes place after the fact and is the planning that a business has to do to get back on its feet after it has been struck by a disaster. Whether or not this disaster is a natural event or something that was caused by a person, the primary reason for putting disaster recovery into place is to help the business recover from its loss. It is a part of a Business Continuity Plan and if one is in place, then when a disaster occurs, there is no need for scrambling to figure out what to do.
The difference between BCP and DR
A BCP is a plan that exists just in case a disaster affects a business and prevents it from operating in a normal manner. A DR, on the other hand, is a plan to handle the situation after a disaster has occurred and efforts need to be made to get the business restarted. With a BCP in place, the damage from such a disaster would be lessened because the company already knows what it will do for Disaster Recovery.
Although they may seem very simple, preparing a BCP and a DR are very complicated procedures. It is important to have funds set aside to implement the plans, which is why they are usually the domain of large corporations who can afford to have monies set aside for this purpose.
Summary
- The main purpose of a Business Continuity Plan is to plan how to keep the company going in the event of a disaster. A Disaster Recovery Plan comes into play after the disaster has occurred and it deals with how to get the business started again.
- A Business Continuity Plan is put into place before a disaster and a Disaster Recovery plan is put into place after a disaster.