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An Essential Guide To Business Continuity And Disaster Recovery

Anuj Tyagi is a seasoned SRE with more than a decade of experience in cloud, AI & cybersecurity. Tech speaker and open-source contributor. getty In an era of cyberthreats, pandemics and natural disasters, risk isn't just a probability—it's a certainty. Three years ago, a ransomware attack hit one of our key clients at 2 a.m. on a Friday, paralyzing their customer service operation and threatening $50,000 per hour in losses. What saved them from catastrophe? Robust business continuity and disaster recovery plans. What A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Is A BCP outlines how an organization continues delivering essential services during disruptions. Whether it's a server outage, supply chain failure or natural disaster, a BCP ensures critical functions operate without interruption. BCPs are essential for reducing downtime and maintaining customer trust. They help protect revenue, especially for mid-sized e-commerce businesses, which can lose between $10,000 and $25,000 for every hour of disruption, in my experience. BCPs also support compliance with regulatory requirements and play a critical role in preserving an organization's reputation. How To Create Your Business Continuity Plan Developing a strong BCP starts with understanding your organization's critical operations and the risks they face. 1. Establishing Policy And Ownership Start with a formal C-level commitment and appoint a dedicated BCP coordinator. Without executive buy-in, you'll lack the resources for effective implementation. 2. Conducting A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) Identify critical business functions and map their dependencies. Quantify financial, operational and reputational impacts of downtime. This analysis reveals recovery priorities and interconnected vulnerabilities. 3. Defining Recovery Objectives Establish realistic targets: • Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD): Absolute maximum offline time • Recovery Time Objective (RTO): How quickly processes must be restored • Recovery Point Objective (RPO): Maximum acceptable data loss 4. Developing Recovery Strategies Evaluate multiple options: redundant systems, multisite architecture, cloud failover and manual workarounds. The best approach often combines multiple strategies. 5. Documenting Everything Create usable documentation including business functions, RTO/RPO targets, roles and responsibilities, communication plans and escalation procedures. Write as if explaining to someone unfamiliar with your organization. 6. Training And Testing Conduct regular simulations and tabletop exercises. Make them realistic with communication challenges and time pressure. Update plans based on test results and organizational changes. Sample BCP Template Here is the essential structure of a BCP: • Purpose: Strategic importance and objectives • Scope: Covered business units and processes • Critical Functions: Ranked operations with dependencies • Recovery Objectives: MTD, RTO and RPO for each function • Contingency Resources: Backup sites, suppliers and emergency resources • Roles And Contacts: Staff assignments and emergency numbers • Communication Plan: Stakeholder messaging and escalation • Testing Schedule: Drill frequency and review cycles What A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) Is A disaster recovery plan focuses specifically on recovering IT systems and data after a disruption. While BCP addresses the entire organization, DRP zeroes in on the technology infrastructure that underpins business operations. DRPs are critical because technology recovery often becomes the bottleneck for overall business recovery. Even minor IT outages can cascade into major operational losses. How To Create Your Disaster Recovery Plan Creating an effective disaster recovery plan involves outlining the steps your organization will take to restore systems, data and operations after a disruption. 1. Inventorying Critical Assets List essential hardware, software, databases and cloud services with their interdependencies. Conduct workshops with both IT and business units to avoid gaps. 2. Defining IT-Specific RTO And RPO Collaborate with business stakeholders to determine system restoration speed and acceptable data loss. For example, payroll systems might require an eight-hour RTO with a two-hour RPO, while e-commerce sites need a 30-minute RTO with a 15-minute RPO. 3. Selecting Recovery Solutions Choose based on cost and recovery speed: • Cold Sites: Cheaper but slower activation • Warm Sites: Mid-cost with partial readiness • Hot Sites: Expensive but near-instant failover • Cloud Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS): Enterprise capabilities at lower upfront costs 4. Establishing Communication Protocols Map out notification procedures and escalation trees. Account for primary contacts being unavailable and use multiple communication channels. 5. Creating DRP Documentation Include defined roles, step-by-step recovery procedures, contact information, communication protocols and testing guidelines with success criteria. 6. Testing And Maintaining Simulate real disaster scenarios beyond just checking backups. Review logs, fix gaps and update regularly for infrastructure changes. Sample DRP Template The essential structure of a DRP includes: • Scope: Covered systems, databases and applications • Recovery Priorities: Ranked list with RTO/RPO targets • DR Strategy: Site approach (cold/warm/hot, cloud or hybrid) • Team Roles: Coordinator, network, security and vendor liaisons • Procedures: Detailed backup, restore and failover instructions • Vendor Information: Support contacts with service levels • Testing Plan: Frequency and types of testing Key Actions To Take Right Now Start by focusing on your top three critical functions rather than attempting to build a comprehensive plan all at once. Within the first 30 days, conduct a tabletop exercise, even if your procedures are still incomplete, to identify gaps early. Be sure to document everything clearly, writing procedures as if for someone unfamiliar with your company. Prioritize crisis communications by establishing methods that don't depend on office systems. Finally, calculate the real costs of potential disruptions, including lost revenue, customer churn, regulatory fines and reputational damage, to help justify further investment. In our digital-first business environment, disruptions aren't an "if"—they're a "when." Effective business continuity and disaster recovery plans ensure your organization can bounce back quickly with minimal loss. Both plans must be management-backed, continuously tested, periodically updated and clearly communicated. The time to build your parachute is not when you're falling. Start building your resilience today, because tomorrow's disruption is already on its way. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?