Business Continuity vs Disaster Recovery: Key Differences

In organizational resilience, two terms get mixed up a lot: Business Continuity (BCP) and Disaster Recovery (DR). They’re related—but not the same. BCP keeps the business running; DR brings technology back after an incident. Here’s a no‑jargon breakdown, plus how they work together.

TL;DR

• BCP = plans and playbooks to keep critical operations going during/after disruption.
• DR = restoring IT systems, applications, data, and infrastructure after an incident.
• Together = resilience: you keep serving customers while tech is brought back online.

What is Business Continuity (BCP)?

BCP is the umbrella strategy for maintaining essential business services when something goes wrong—power loss, supplier outage, cyber event, severe weather, you name it. It typically includes:

• Impact and risk assessments (BIA / risk register)
• Prioritized processes and recovery time objectives (RTO/RPO)
• Alternate ways to serve customers, fulfill orders, and communicate
• Workforce, facilities, and vendor contingencies
• Exercises, training, and plan maintenance

What is Disaster Recovery (DR)?

DR is a subset of continuity focused on technology: apps, databases, cloud/on‑prem infrastructure, networks, endpoints. It covers:

• Backups and data protection (frequency, retention, immutability)
• Failover/failback, replication, and runbooks
• Environment rebuild procedures and configuration baselines
• Recovery testing and evidence

BCP vs. DR: Key Differences

Why You Need Both

Even perfect DR won’t help if you can’t serve customers while IT recovers—and a great BCP fails if nobody can access systems. Align the two so business priorities drive DR targets (e.g., your BIA informs RTO/RPO for applications).

Getting Started: A Simple Path

1. Run a quick BIA to rank your processes and set RTO/RPO targets.
2. Map apps to processes (what tech each process needs).
3. Set DR strategies that hit the targets (backup, replication, HA/DR runbooks).
4. Exercise both the business playbook and DR runbooks together—measure real recovery.
5. Fix gaps (people, vendors, configs), then rinse and repeat quarterly.

Quick FAQ

Is DR part of BCP? Yes—DR is the technology pillar inside your broader continuity program.

Which should I do first? Start with a light BIA so business priorities set your DR targets.

How often should we test? At least annually for full exercises; quarterly for targeted DR tests is ideal.

Related Reading

• The Ultimate BCP Checklist
• Business Continuity vs. Emergency Response