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Be Prepared: Why A Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan is Crucial For Your Organization

September is National Preparedness Month, the perfect time to re-evaluate the necessity of having a robust business continuity and disaster recovery plan to protect your organization from an emergency. From the loss of a critical vendor to an organization-wide network outage, emergencies come in many shapes and sizes.

Having the right processes and procedures in place will significantly increase your organization’s ability to recover and continue operations. With the increasing dependence on technology and data to drive operations, the ability to quickly recover from disruptions and continue business operations is paramount.

In this article, we’ll explore the critical importance of having both a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) and a Business Continuity Plan (BCP). We’ll discuss how these plans will help prepare your organization for substantial disruption and the potential impacts on those who fail to implement them.

What is a Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan?

A Disaster Recovery Plan is a documented, structured approach that describes how an organization can quickly resume operations after an unplanned event. It helps organizations resolve data loss and recover system functionality to perform in the aftermath of an event, even if it operates at a minimal level. This plan typically consists of steps to minimize the effects of a disaster to promote continued operations and quickly resume mission-critical functions. Typically, a DRP involves an analysis of business processes and continuity needs.

A Business Continuity Plan is a document that consists of the critical information an organization needs to continue operating during an unplanned event. The plan defines the essential functions of the business, identifies which systems and processes must be sustained, and details how to maintain them. It should consider any business disruption.

These two plans together comprise two-thirds of an organization’s crisis management plan. Every organization should consider these plans to maintain continued operations in the event of an emergency and provide stakeholders with comfort that the organization has a plan in place for a crisis.

The Importance of a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

Minimizing Business Disruption
A well-structured DRP helps put a plan in place so that an organization can quickly resume operations after a disaster, minimizing downtime and disruption. This is crucial for maintaining productivity, reputation, financial stability, and service delivery.

Reducing Data Loss
A DRP helps organizations formalize a plan to identify critical systems and data, establish backup objectives, and overall protect critical data from being lost due to unforeseen events such as cyberattacks, natural disasters, or human error. Regular backups and data recovery procedures are essential components of a DRP.

Cost Efficiency
Recovering from a disaster can be costly. A DRP provides a clear, efficient path to recovery, helping to mitigate these costs and reduce financial and reputation losses. To effectively mitigate costs associated with the disaster, a detailed plan that outlines the specific actions, who is involved, and what any work arounds for processes may be are imperative to keeping costs down.

Compliance and Legal Requirements
Many industries have regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI, etc. that require businesses to have a disaster recovery plan. Compliance with these regulations helps avoid legal and regulatory penalties and demonstrates a commitment to operational reliability.

Enhancing Resilience
A DRP prepares an organization to adapt to unexpected situations effectively, thereby reducing the impact of such events and enhancing overall resilience. A DRP often outlines the critical systems and data utilized for critical processes, backup procedures/processes, how to restore and rebuild data, systems, and critical infrastructure, and how long these systems can be offline until restoration procedures are deemed necessary. Having this information detailed will help ensure the DRP has the best recovery procedures outlined, as well as ensuring the appropriate backup processes are in place within the organization. This understanding will help organizations gain resiliency, be able to pivot, and ensure a speedy recovery.

Protecting Reputation
Quick recovery and minimal downtime help maintain customer trust and protect the organization’s reputation. Having a detailed plan in place will also provide customers, investors, regulators, vendors, etc., with peace of mind knowing this has been thought out ahead of time.

The Importance of a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

Minimizing Downtime
A BCP ensures that essential business functions can continue during and after a disaster, reducing downtime and maintaining operations. Downtime is considered from the time the disaster occurs until operations and systems are fully restored. Having a continuity plan in place that outlines how to maintain each function/system and recovery accordingly will help keep this time down to a minimum.

Protecting Data and IT Infrastructure
A BCP helps safeguard the integrity of data and IT systems, ensuring that critical information remains secure and accessible. Understanding what the mission-critical processes and functions are and the systems and data that support them are key in maintaining data integrity. Knowing what systems and data are utilized for each process is the first step in determining how to secure and preserve it in the event of an emergency.

Maintaining Customer Service
By having a BCP in place, organizations can continue to provide services to their customers, preserving trust and satisfaction. This plan specifically outlines how to continue to execute business in the event of disaster and loss of critical processes, systems, data, or vendors. Having proper workarounds identified and outlined will ensure that operations can continue, whether it’s at 100% operations or in a reduced fashion for a period until 100% performance can be achieved.

Reducing Financial Losses
A well-prepared BCP can mitigate the financial impact of disruptions by enabling a quicker recovery and minimizing revenue loss. Having a plan that prioritizes the mission-critical processes and systems will lead to a more streamlined recovery process, which in turn will result in a quicker, more cost-efficient recovery process.

Enhancing Resilience
A BCP prepares an organization to manage several types of disruptions, making it more resilient and adaptable to unexpected events. A BCP often outlines the business-critical functions or processes, any dependencies, systems, and data utilized, and how long these systems can be off-line until restoration procedures are deemed necessary. Having this information detailed out will help ensure the BCP has the best recovery procedures outlined as well as ensuring the appropriate backup processes are in place within the organization. This understanding will help organizations gain resiliency, be able to pivot, and ensure a speedy recovery.

Compliance and Legal Requirements
Many industries have regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI, etc., that require businesses to have a business continuity plan. Compliance with these regulations helps avoid legal and regulatory penalties and demonstrates a commitment to operational reliability.

Protecting Reputation
Quick recovery and continued operations help maintain the organization’s reputation and stakeholder confidence. Having a detailed plan in place will also provide customers, investors, regulators, vendors, etc., with peace of mind knowing this has been thought out ahead of time.

The Impact of Not Having DRP and BCP

Having both a Disaster Recovery Plan and a Business Continuity Plan is essential for organizations to ensure operational resilience, protect data, maintain customer trust, and comply with legal requirements. The absence of these plans can lead to significant financial losses, reputational damage, and operational disruptions. Investing in a DRP and BCP is not just a best practice but a critical component of modern business strategy.

Organizations that cannot quickly recover from disruptions risk damaging their reputation, which can have long-term negative effects on their brand and market position. It can also impact the decision-making process that executives and leadership teams need to make informed and strategic decisions for the organization. Longer downtimes and systems outages can severely impact operations, which in turn will impact customers, vendors, investors, and other stakeholders.

How Centri Can Help

At Centri, our IT Risk & Cybersecurity experts work as an extension of your team to develop comprehensive Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP) and Business Continuity Plans (BCP). These plans are essential for minimizing business disruption, reducing data loss, and ensuring compliance with legal requirements. Our detailed approach helps organizations quickly resume operations, protect their reputation, and enhance overall resilience. Contact us to learn how we can assist your company in preparing for and managing substantial disruptions effectively.

Karyn DiMassa

Managing Director | CPA, PMP, CISA, CFE

Karyn is a Managing Director in the IT Risk & Cybersecurity Practice at Centri Business Consulting. She has more than 13 years of combined experience in internal IT audit and external audit support (IT controls), third-party assurance (SOC 1 and SOC 2 reporting), internal controls consulting, project management, IT risk and cybersecurity, and system implementation support. View Karyn DiMassa's Full Bio

Rich Sowalsky

Managing Director | IT Risk & Cybersecurity Practice Leader | CISA

Rich is a Managing Director at Centri Business Consulting and the leader of the firm’s IT Risk & Cybersecurity Practice. He has more than 14 years of combined experience in internal control consulting, IT risk, cybersecurity advisory, and risk-based internal audits and accounting. View Rich Sowalsky's Full Bio