Define Business Continuity
Posted by Jean McKay on Fri, Aug 27, 2010 @ 05:08 PM
There are a couple of terms that are used consistently to define these processes.
The first is Disaster Recovery. This means earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and the like. These are disasters. But it depends on where you live or where you are at any time which ones you may be subject to. These are natural disasters. There are also man-made disasters, such as terrorist attacks, theft, physical assaults, etc. Would you agree that any of those would cause you a disastrous situation?
The other term is Business Continuity. This means making sure your business can continue to operate even through a disastrous event and survive afterwards. Disaster recovery is one part of a Business continuity plan.
These two terms, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity, work together. Planning for them ensures that your company will be able to survive a disaster, or any event that you can anticipate occurring that would negatively impact your business operations.
But more than that, it also mean the company will be able to function during and through the timeframe of the disaster, and then recover to the state it was in previous to the disaster event.
There is one more aspect of this. Opportunities. Your company can probably can do a better job of taking advantage of the few opportunities that come along if this same process is used to plan for them.