Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery are terms that are commonly used together. BCDR deals with how companies and organizations handle disruptive events. Be it a natural disaster, disgruntled employee, or unreliable hardware, BCDR address your response time in the event something happens. Despite being used synonymously, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery have different meanings – when it comes down to it, you need to ask yourself, what is my acceptable downtime?
Disaster Recovery drives towards data recovery while Business Continuity drives towards high availability. Disaster recovery is a set of specific steps taken to resume operations in the aftermath of a disruptive event. Business continuity describes the processes and procedures an organization must put in place to ensure that mission-critical functions can continue during and after a disaster. Two different meanings yet BCDR directly relates to your recovery process.
According to Info Security Magazine, nearly 60% of large organizations experience a major IT outage at least monthly, stemming from security incidents and IT glitches. Furthermore, it’s cited that 90% of large business report experiencing at least one major IT incident during the year. Despite the extremely high prevalence of outages, BCDR is not a high priority for most companies. Businesses will tend to do the bare minimum given the costs involved with implementing a BCDR solution. The result? Failure to consider the costs and business impacts of possible downtown time and disruptions, the effects of an outage can be very expensive and long lasting.
There are two main concepts you need to take into consideration when planning your BCDR strategy; Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO). These objectives vary with each company, depending on your need and what you consider an acceptable downtime. When considering the options, consider the value. A well thought out BCDR plan will save you time during an outage, recover your critical information, fix the issue, and return your normal operations as soon as possible. If you are considering any IT initiative this year, consider a BCDR solution.
Matt Dixon, PEI
