The Importance of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

The Importance of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Every enterprise wants to be ready for any eventuality that could disrupt the normal course of
productivity. Any plan that helps enterprises with such disruptions and events is known as a
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) plan. From natural disasters to power
outages, disasters that can potentially affect an enterprise’s productivity can be many. Thus, a
BC/DR plan typically involves an input support system that can be engaged during any time of
emergency to ensure that the enterprise can run smoothly despite disruptions.
Forrester analyst Stephanie Balaouras’ research report titled “Business Continuity and
Disaster Recovery Are Top IT Priorities For 2010 and 2011” states that “business continuity
and disaster recovery (BC/DR) capabilities are the No. 1 priority for SMBs and the second
highest priority for enterprises for the next 12 months.” The report further claims that “the
scope of BC/DR programs is growing” and that BC/DR programs across enterprises should
“address all sources of downtime — including mundane power outages and weather-related
disruptions, not just rare, catastrophic disasters.” This means that “security and risk
professionals should take advantage of this increased visibility as the economic recovery
slowly thaws IT budgets to improve the BC/DR's organizational and process maturity for the
long term.”
Why such disaster recovery plans are important is actually quite simple to understand. With
every enterprise wanting to succeed in an increasingly competitive landscape that is now
marred with events that occurred out of terrorist acts, natural disasters, etc., BC/DR plans
and strategies have assumed grave significance because of the far-reaching effects they can
have on the survival of an enterprise. The idea behind a business continuity disaster recovery
plan is to ensure that there are no shortcomings that may occur even if there are failures
connected to communication, supply chain, etc.

The main aim of a BC/DR plan is to make the enterprise ready for those unexpected events
that could upset the whole balance of the enterprise. It is about ensuring that all business
aspects remain unaffected in spite of disruptions. The basic BC/DR plan covers elements such
as potential risks, prioritizing critical business functions, installing alternate operational work
locations in case of disasters, testing of BC/DR plans, backups for power failures, putting
safeguards in place for the property, installation of alternative communications in case of
communication failures, etc. In addition to this, an optimized BC/DR plan includes ways and
means of keeping your employees prepared for any eventualities.
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