What is Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery (BCDR)?

Regardless of how careful or calculated your business may be, unforeseen circumstances are inevitable. These disruptions can wrench any business’s operations, sometimes more severe than others. Whether it’s a power outage, a natural disaster or a cyberattack, these events can bring everything to a halt, often with serious consequences.

Business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) is the route to take to tackle these issues. But what is BCDR? It’s your company’s safety net, a set of strategies and processes to keep your business running smoothly or get it back on track as quickly as possible when things go wrong.

Below, we discuss BCDR in detail, explaining its importance and implementation. By the end, you’ll have a clear idea of how to keep your business afloat and resilient in the face of unexpected events.

What is BCRD?
Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery
Why is BCDR important?
Common Causes of Downtime
Putting Together a BCDR Plan
Ongoing Testing and Maintenance of Your BCDR Plan

What Is BCDR?

Business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) is the process that keeps your business operational during and after a crisis or disaster. Think of it as an insurance policy, but one that’s proactive rather than reactive. Instead of waiting for something to go wrong, BCDR helps businesses anticipate potential risks and prepare a clear, actionable response.

Let’s say a hurricane is forecasted to hit your area. Your BCDR plan kicks in, so you may opt for remote operations, shift to a backup location or implement other contingency measures.

Once the hurricane passes, you can resume business effectively. Without these measures, you might face operational disruptions and possibly even permanent closure. Financial losses are also possible.

BCDR is not just for natural disasters or physical crises. It also pertains to cyberattacks and other digital threats that have become increasingly prevalent today. It’s no surprise that The National CIO Review revealed that security made up 13.2% of IT budgets in 2024, an 8.6% increase from 2020. Similarly, global cybersecurity spending reached $87 billion in 2024.

These findings indicate one major trend: businesses are becoming more aware of the importance of BCDR. As the types of disasters change, so do the recovery verticals.

Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery

To fully understand the BCDR meaning, we have to look at its main components. While these two concepts are closely related, they are neither interchangeable nor similar. The subtle differences between the two are important to understand.

Aspect Business Continuity Disaster Recovery Focus Ensures essential operations continue during a crisisRestores systems and data after a crisisApproach Proactive and preventiveReactive and restorativeScope Covers all critical business functions, including people and resourcesPrimarily focuses on IT systems, data and infrastructureGoal Minimize disruption and maintain normal operations as much as possibleReturn systems and data to normal functioning quicklyTiming During a crisisAfter the crisis has been resolvedExamples of ActionsAlternate work arrangements, remote access optionsData restoration, server repair, database recovery

In simple words, business continuity refers to continuing your business operations in the event of a disaster. It’s like having a Plan B for your everyday processes, ensuring you can still serve your customers and maintain critical functions regardless of disruptions.

Business continuity isn’t just about technology. It also comprises people and processes, ensuring everyone knows their role in a crisis.

At the crux of business continuity is preparedness. How ready are you for disasters? How fast can you recover disrupted operations and get back to normal business mode? A business continuity plan will include procedures for these scenarios.

Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery is an IT-centric concept. It’s more reactive and specifically focuses on restoring your systems and data to normal after a disruption.

Say a cyberattack or server crash wipes out your business data. Disaster recovery makes sure you have copies to restore from or other means of getting back to normal. Being more technical, it includes things like:

• System redundancies
• Data recovery tools
• Cloud backups

Besides cyberattacks, a disaster recovery plan will also have provisions for malware attacks, ransomware, natural disasters and massive outages.

Why Is BCDR Important?

A business continuity disaster recovery plan is important for many reasons. At the surface level, it keeps your business up and running while others may scramble to figure out what went wrong. Here are some other in-depth reasons BCDR matters so much for today’s businesses.

Protects Against Financial Loss

Irrespective of their type, disasters come with a lot of monetary risk. In just the first nine months of 2024, natural disasters alone cost losses amounting to $280 billion. Similarly, IBM has reported the average cost of a data breach in 2024 to be $4.88 million. Add other potential disasters, and the numbers become even more alarming.

While some financial losses are inevitable, you can minimize them with a solid BCDR plan. Your BCDR strategy can reduce economic losses by:

• Minimizing downtime risks
• Preventing data loss
• Ensuring business continuity
• Preventing cyberattacks and their associated costs

Reduces Downtime

It’s not just money at stake during a disaster; your business operations also take a hit. When systems go down, everything halts, from customer support to supply chain disruptions.

However, if you have a BCDR plan, you can reduce downtime by:

• Having backups for critical systems and data
• Having alternative means of communication and processes in case the primary ones fail
• Implementing disaster recovery measures that prioritize system recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO)

Mitigates Reputation Damage

The way you handle a disaster can impact your brand’s reputation. Customers and stakeholders expect businesses to be prepared for any situation; if they see that you’re not, it can lead to a loss of trust. On the contrary, a BCDR plan indicates your commitment to providing uninterrupted services and protecting sensitive data.

Minimizes Fines and Penalties

A business continuity disaster recovery plan is even more important in highly regulated industries where non-compliance leads to hefty fines. Penalties are typically associated with two factors:

• The duration of the disruption
• The severity of the disaster

A BCDR plan helps reduce both these factors, resulting in lower fines.

Common Causes of Downtime

While every business may have some unique risks associated with its operations, a few causes of downtime apply to almost every organization. Here’s how:

• Cyberattacks and security breaches: Data privacy and security are highly prioritized topics these days, and for good reason. To put things into perspective, in 2024, over a billion business records have been stolen in the US alone. Cyberattacks result in widespread system disruptions, data loss, reputational loss and financial damage.
• Hardware and software failures: Tech issues, whether due to server crashes, outdated software or hardware malfunctions, are a frequent cause of downtime.
• Natural disasters: Weather-related events can cause power outages or damage physical infrastructure, leading to service disruptions. While not all weather events are predictable, a BCDR plan can mitigate their impact.
• Power outages: An unexpected power outage due to a utility issue can also cripple operations. This is especially true for tech-reliant businesses.
• Tech issues: A bug in your software or hardware can also disrupt operations. A good example is the Microsoft outage that slowed down global services in July 2024.
• Supply chain disruptions: At times, a third-party risk may affect your business operations. For example, a manufacturing plant could shut down due to an unforeseen event. As a result, product delivery would be delayed.

Human errors may also lead to organizational downtime. These can range from simple mistakes like accidentally deleting important information to more serious ones like falling for phishing scams or leaving sensitive documents unsecured.

Putting Together a BCDR Plan

There are two parts to building a BCDR plan: creating a business continuity plan and then a disaster recovery plan. However, before going into that, you should know about two things:

• Recovery time objective (RTO): It’s the time within which a system or a process must be re-established after it fails to avoid a significant impact on business operations. You must establish an RTO beforehand.
• Recovery point objective (RPO): The RPO is how much data you can afford to lose in case of a disaster. It determines the frequency of backups and other data protection measures.

Now, you’re all set to create a BCDR plan.

Creating a Business Continuity Plan

Let’s start with the steps of building a business continuity plan.

Step 1: Conduct a Business Impact Analysis

Start by overviewing all potential threats and risks that can impact your business. Include both internal and external vulnerabilities. In this stage, you also have to determine how likely each threat will occur so that you can prioritize them accordingly.

Step 2: Determine Threat Responses

How will you deal with each of the identified threats? Will you avoid, mitigate, transfer or accept them? Collaborate with different departments to develop a comprehensive action plan for each scenario.

The plan should be detailed enough to cover any possible situation and flexible enough to adapt to changing situations. It should also include strategies for communication and decision-making during an emergency.

Step 3: Assign Responsibilities

When a crisis strikes, everyone in the organization should know their role to avoid confusion or fears. Each team member should know what to do and who to report to as soon as the alarm is raised. In some disruptive events, internet and cellular connectivity may also be down, so it’s important everyone knows their jobs beforehand.

Step 4: Test Your Plan

First, train your employees on their respective roles in a disruptive situation. Then, rehearse your BCDR plan through simulations and drills. If there are weaknesses in the strategy, you’ll notice them during these exercises and can take corrective action.

Creating a Disaster Recovery Plan

Since disaster recovery is reactive, you must emphasize data recovery and backup in this plan. Here’s how:

Step 1: Analyze Risks

Just like you did earlier, list all possible threats and prioritize them. Next, assess the potential outcome of each risk, such as financial loss or reputation damage.

Step 2: Identify Your Assets

To keep business assets safe during a disaster, you must first know what they are. Create a list of all your physical and digital assets, including:

• Equipment
• Documents
• Data
• Networks
• Software

Then, assign them labels based on importance. The Critical Assets category should include items crucial for business continuity, whereas those with less importance can be labeled as Secondary Assets. If you own assets you don’t use too frequently, such as old equipment, mark them as Non-Essential Assets.

Step 3: Create a Contingency Plan

Backup, backup, backup. That’s the mantra you need to follow for a comprehensive disaster recovery plan. Here are some backup strategies you can use:

• Regularly backing up data on secure, off-site servers or cloud storage
• Creating multiple copies of vital documents and storing them in different locations
• Having redundant systems, such as backup power generators or secondary servers
• Creating a communication plan with contact information for key stakeholders and personnel

Step 4: Assign Roles

Again, disaster recovery is a team effort. You should let everyone know beforehand what’s expected of them in such a situation. Some roles may be:

• Incident reporter: The person responsible for identifying and reporting the disaster
• Recovery coordinator: Someone who oversees the recovery process
• Asset manager: The individual in charge of safeguarding and retrieving assets
• Supervisor: Someone from every department who will ensure their team’s compliance with the disaster recovery plan
• Communication coordinator: The person responsible for disseminating information and updates to relevant parties.

Ongoing Testing and Maintenance of Your BCDR Plan

A BCDR plan isn’t a once-set process. You have to test it regularly and update it as needed. Testing includes running drills, simulations and scenarios to ensure your plan is effective. If you’ve added a new clause to the plan, train your employees on it. Similarly, test your backup systems to make sure they’re functioning properly.

As for maintenance, update the plan as things change in your organization. For example, you may have acquired new assets. These need to go into the inventory for the BCDR plan, too. Also, the asset manager should be made aware of this new addition so that they can include it in their recovery plan.

While you’re at it, adding BCDR software to the mix can facilitate the process. There are many benefits of using a BCDR tool, such as automated testing and business impact analyses. Plus, these tools can generate reports for compliance purposes and provide real-time monitoring of your disaster recovery efforts.

Automate Your BCDR Strategy

We’ve established that a BCDR plan is non-negotiable in the current business world. However, if you do everything manually, chaos and errors may ensue. Automation may just be the solution you’re looking for.

With BCDR software like Onspring, you can automate business impact analysis, centralize processes, schedule regular reviews, identify strategy gaps, comply with industry standards, send emergency alerts and more. Our software also provides detailed reporting in a personalized dashboard for data-sharing with relevant stakeholders.

Schedule a demo to see how Onspring’s BCDR software can help your organization prepare for the unexpected.