Strategy and Tactics: The Difference Between BCP and BDR

Are you ready for potential cyber attacks and natural disasters that can threaten your business? Rather than hope for the best and assume your team can manage emergency situations, you should proactively plan how to best handle disaster scenarios and — just as importantly — how you would recover when an event occurs.

It’s not a question of if you will face a problem, but when.

A business continuity strategy and disaster recovery plan can go a long way in helping you navigate unexpected issues and avoid an outcome you can’t recover from. Keep reading to learn more about how to future-proof your business by preparing for the worst-case scenarios.

What is the Difference Between BCP and BDR?

In the desire to drive home the importance of having a business continuity strategy and recovery plan in place and using the terms together, people have begun to consider them the same thing, treating them as if they are interchangeable. That is simply not the case; business continuity and recovery plans are two different processes.

A business continuity plan (BCP) focuses on maintaining essential business functions and operations during and after a disruptive event, ensuring that the organization can continue to deliver products or services to customers. This includes:

• Identifying critical business processes, assessing potential risks and vulnerabilities
• Developing strategies for mitigating disruptions
• Establishing procedures for resuming operations

The purpose of this plan is to minimize operational downtime, protect the organization’s reputation, and preserve revenue streams by enabling the business to function effectively in the face of adversity.

A disaster recovery plan (DRP) specifically addresses the recovery of IT infrastructure, systems, and data in the event of a disaster or disruptive incident. DRPs typically include:

• Procedures for backing up data
• Plans for restoring systems, assets, and applications
• Establishing IT infrastructure to support business continuity

The primary focus of a DRP is on restoring IT services and minimizing data loss following a disaster or catastrophic event, such as a cyberattack, natural disaster, or hardware failure.

It is important to have both in place, if you hope to recover your business after a disaster, it is important to remember they serve different purposes and need to be treated differently when it comes to developing your plan.

Why Does Your Business Need a BCP?

The purpose of a business continuity plan (BCP) is to focus on developing a course of action for when disaster strikes your business. Your BCP should include the steps needed to ensure your products or services can be delivered in case of disaster or any critical event. The BCP is strategic; it’s only goal is to figure out the steps needed to keep your business running. This means a BCP must be personalized; there is no way a cookie cutter plan will provide you the insights needed to develop an effective plan for your business needs.

A business continuity plan takes an eagle-eye view of determining who, what, where and how your business will be able to remain operational in case of disaster. It takes a look at the big picture and provides the ‘bureaucracy’ which keeps the engine running. 

Your BCP should determine and delegate what each department and person is responsible for when disaster strikes. Your business continuity plan should detail:

• The specific risks you are building plans for
• Which processes, systems, and services are critical to operation of the business
• Organizational responsibilities during an event (who, when, why, how)
• The disaster recovery plan (DRP)

Why Does Your Business Need a DRP?

The disaster recovery plan (DRP) outlines the “boots on the ground” strategy to accomplish the goals of the BCP. In other words, the DRP supports the plan developed by the BCP team in the granular details. While your business continuity plan provides the overarching strategy, your disaster recovery plan includes the solutions to make sure it can happen. 

A properly enacted recovery plan will help your business become operational as soon as possible and reduce downtime. Your DRP is responsible for outlining:

• Proactive IT security and infrastructure to minimize threats
• Infrastructure restoration (this may require alternate locations)
• Process for protecting data via backup and recovery retrieval
• How (and when) you test your DRP to make sure it is reasonable and effective
• How you will maintain connectivity (phones, internet and more)
• Hardware and software limitations, recovery processes, and needs

Example Use Cases of BCP vs DPR 

When we treat BCP and DPR as interchangeable, we risk neglecting issues that may be critical to providing services to our clients, after we have suffered a disaster. Here’s an example of what happens if you only consider your BCP:

Disaster strikes and your company starts to alert customers and reach out to impacted partners. However, without a secure recovery process tested and ready, your team is unable to recover critical information or restore IT services promptly. A disaster recovery plan would have outlined what processes your team should take to begin restoring information, software, and hardware most critical to your business.

Or, what happens with only developing a DPR:

Your Managed IT provider has gotten your systems back online, your data is retrieved, and all systems are good to go. Only, because no one reached out to your customers, they don’t know you’re up and running and are looking for other business to solve their issues. A business continuity plan would’ve delegated client communication to a team member, who would have contacted your clients and managed their expectations.

Another way to think about this is that the DRP should be part of the BCP and not treated as a separate entity. The business continuity plan must cover aspects of keeping your business up and running — including the recovery plan.

The Benefits of Establishing a BCP and DRP for Your Business

Why plan ahead for potential disaster? There are several benefits to being prepared for the things that could go wrong. It’s best to hope for the best and plan for the worst.

Comprehensive Risk Management

Use both a BCP and a DRP to comprehensively manage risks to both business operations and your IT infrastructure, to increase the ability to prevail in the face of various disruptive events.

Minimized Downtime

A BCP enables organizations to maintain essential business functions during disruptions, while a DRP ensures swift recovery of IT systems and data, minimizing downtime and reducing the impact on operations.

Enhanced Resilience

Enhance organizational resilience by providing a structured framework for anticipating, preparing for, and responding to disruptions, enabling businesses to adapt and thrive in challenging environments.

Protection of Revenue Streams

Continue to deliver products or services to customers during disruptions and mitigate financial losses by restoring operations as quickly as possible.

Preservation of Reputation

Effectively managing disruptions and minimizing downtime to protect your reputation and maintain customer trust, demonstrating resilience and reliability in the face of adversity.

Compliance with Regulations

Both BCPs and DRPs often include provisions for compliance with regulatory requirements and industry standards, ensuring that organizations meet legal obligations and avoid penalties associated with non-compliance.

Increased Peace of Mind

Feel more confident and secure knowing your organization is well-prepared to address potential disruptions on every level.

Competitive Advantage

Demonstrate your organization’s ability to withstand disruptions, meet customer expectations, and maintain operational continuity to stand out as a reliable brand.

How To Create a Business Continuity Plan

Before creating a DRP, you want to clarify challenges and goals with a clear and detailed BCP. Here are the steps for creating a business continuity plan.

1. Conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

Conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to identify critical business processes, functions, and resources. Assess the potential impact of disruptions on these critical components and determine recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) for each critical process.

2. Perform a Risk Assessment

Identify potential threats and hazards that could disrupt business operations, such as natural disasters, cyberattacks, power outages, or supply chain disruptions. Evaluate the likelihood and potential impact of each threat on business operations, and prioritize risks based on severity and likelihood of occurrence.

3. Develop Strategies and Solutions Related to Your Findings

Develop strategies and solutions for mitigating identified risks and minimizing the impact of disruptions. Determine alternative work locations, backup suppliers, redundant systems, and other measures to ensure business continuity. Document procedures for activating and implementing these strategies in response to specific scenarios.

4. Create Documentation to Outline Your Plan

Document the BCP in a comprehensive and accessible format, outlining roles and responsibilities, emergency contact information, and step-by-step procedures for responding to disruptions. Ensure that the plan is clear, concise, and easy to understand, with specific instructions for different stakeholders and scenarios.

5. Train Your Team and Delineate Responsibilities

Everyone should understand the “who, what, when, and why” of your plan. Provide training and awareness programs to educate employees about their roles and responsibilities in implementing the BCP. 

Conduct regular drills, exercises, and simulations to test the effectiveness of the plan and familiarize employees with their roles during an actual emergency. Evaluate the effectiveness of the plan in addressing different types of disruptions and identify areas for improvement.

6. Regularly Review and Update Your BCP

Regularly review and update the BCP to reflect changes in business processes, technologies, regulations, or threats. Conduct post-incident reviews and lessons-learned exercises to identify areas for improvement and incorporate feedback into the BCP.

Solicit input from stakeholders, including employees, management, customers, and partners, to ensure that the BCP remains relevant and effective over time.

How To Create a Disaster Recovery Plan

Establishing a disaster recovery plan follows the same process as the BCP: 

1. Conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
2. Perform a Risk Assessment
3. Develop Strategies and Solutions Related to Your Findings
4. Create Documentation to Outline Your Plan
5. Train Your Team and Delineate Responsibilities
6. Regularly Review and Update Your BCP

However, instead of focusing the plan on big picture business functions and operations, you’ll be looking at IT infrastructure and data. You also will likely work with a third-party platform or IT provider to help you store and manage your systems, applications, and data.

If something goes wrong, you need to consider how your data is backed up and how you can reduce downtime. Your DRP should include procedures for backing up data, restoring systems and applications, and recovering IT infrastructure to ensure business continuity.

• Determine who will regularly back up crucial information and sensitive data in a secure offsite location. 
• Make sure your employees follow best practices for saving business-critical information in places where it can be backed up and accessed if a disaster occurs.
• Choose a third-party vendor who can help you assess your needs, understand your options and create a robust recovery plan.

Trust IronEdge To Help You Future-Proof Your Business

Anything from the most innocent accident to a natural disaster or a hacker can interrupt an organization’s operational continuity. This is exactly why organizations should have strategies in place to circumvent many of the issues that result from operational interruptions. 

But you don’t need to consider all the threats and potential recovery needs on your own! IronEdge helps organizations like yours future-proof their business plans with continuity and disaster recovery strategies.

Our consultants can provide the knowledge base, technical experience, and solutions necessary to put a thorough continuity or return-to-operations plan in place. We’ll make sure you understand best practices for backup and recovery to help you minimize the stress and cost of downtime.

Will your business be ready when disaster strikes? The IronEdge team is here to protect your business and prepare it for the unexpected.