Thursday, 8 January 2015 Blog ehdf

Backup, DR & Business Continuity – How are they different ?

If you think ‘backup’ is synonymous with ‘disaster recovery’ and aren’t sure what ‘business continuity’ means, you are not alone. With an effort to differentiate each term, we explain them below:

1.Backup: At the core of every business is data, losing which can cripple any organization — big or small. Many studies indicate that every year, data loss costs businesses millions of dollars and in the aftermath of a disaster, 50% of small companies never recover. For larger organizations, this cost of data loss can be even more significant, directly impacting revenue and brand reputation. This makes it imperative for organizations to have a backup of their critical IT systems and data to ensure undisrupted business operations.

2.Disaster Recovery: Disaster recovery is a subset of overall business continuity. It is the process, policies and procedures related to preparing for recovery or continuation of technology infrastructure critical to an organization after a natural or human-induced disaster.

3.Business Continuity: Business continuity is a much wider concept—it is a sustained and long-term process that typically refers to the management’s foresight and planning in ensuring the continuous operation of a business with little or no downtime in the eventuality of any disaster. In essence, Disaster Recovery is a subset of Business Continuity.

Business continuity is the most mature form of preparedness for disasters or any form of disruptions to the business. With this knowledge, it is important for organizations to prepare themselves for the worst and have a strategic business continuity plan in place.