Business Continuity
Why business continuity?
Business continuity planning involves identifying any and all risks that can affect the company's operations. The plan should also determine how those risks will affect operations and implement safeguards and procedures to mitigate the risks. There should also be testing procedures to ensure these safeguards and procedures work. Finally, there should be a review process to make sure that the plan is up to date.
How a company responds during an emergency or other unexpected event can drastically impact how quickly it can resume operations and its prospects for future success. Planning ahead and having systems in place for such events can be just as important as the actual response once an event occurs.
To prepare, companies should have both business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans in place. While business continuity and disaster recovery plans are two separate types of plans, they should complement each other as there are many similar concerns for each.
What is a business continuity plan?
A business continuity plan is a predefined approach and procedure for how a business will continue to run when coping with a disaster that renders their IT services, among other things, out of service. The main question is how the business will survive while IT services are being recovered. Other questions are based on a loss of other assets that are needed to continue your business. A disaster recovery plan normally covers your IT services and not your day-to-day business needs.
What is a disaster recovery plan?
A disaster recovery plan is a predefined approach and procedure for restoring the business to full functionality, following a system failure or compromise, while keeping the impact to a minimum.