Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

Businesses need to keep running during times of crisis. A central part of the challenge is bridging through and recovering from computer system crashes that can put a halt to sales, operations, production, and transportation.

 

Whether IT outages are caused by human actions, software bugs, extreme weather, or natural disasters, organizations need well-planned operational and technical strategies for getting through a crisis with key processes intact, then quickly recovering and resuming normal work.

What Is Business Continuity?

What is Disaster Recovery?

Business continuity plans provide an organization’s leaders with roadmaps for keeping operations running when a disaster or IT failure disrupts the normal flow of work and takes the applications they rely on offline.

 

Business continuity plans (BCPs) play a critical role in disaster recovery and help organizations return to normal business functions when a disaster happens. Where a DRP focuses specifically on IT systems, business continuity management focuses more broadly on various aspects of preparedness.

Disaster recovery describes the detailed technical plans businesses created for getting workloads up and running again in its order of importance, the budgets they allocate for doing so, and plans for testing the strategy.

 

A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a contingency plan for how an enterprise will recover from an unexpected event. DRPs help businesses manage different disaster scenarios, such as massive outages, natural disasters, ransomware and malware attacks, and many others.

What is BCDR (Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery)?

Building a BCDR plan involves several steps, beginning with assembling a team of key stakeholders. By following this process, a comprehensive BCDR plan can be built to help protect business and minimize disruptions in the event of an emergency.

    1. Identify and build a team.
    2. Catalog the physical and IT assets that could be affected by a disaster.
    3. Conduct a business impact analysis of operations and locations that could be disrupted by a disaster.
    4. Establish an alternative site where staff can work during the disruptions.
    5. Create a disaster recovery plan that ensures recovery times are commensurate with an application’s importance.
    6. IT teams should determine which workloads can be restored from backup.
    7. Test the business continuity and disaster recovery plans

Examples of BCDR

In terms of BCDR planning, every business is going to have its own unique set of needs. Here are a few examples of plans that are effective for companies of differing sizes and industries:

 

  1. Crisis management plan

A crisis management plan, also known as an incident management plan, is a detailed plan for managing a specific incident. It provides detailed instructions on how your organization responds to a specific crisis, such as a power outage, cyberattack or natural disaster.

 

  1. Communications plan

A communications plan outlines how your organization handles public relations (PR) in the event of a disaster. Business leaders typically coordinate with communications specialists to formulate communications plans that complement any crisis management activities needed to keep business operations going during an unplanned incident.

 

  1. Data center recovery plan

A data center recovery plan focuses on the security of a data center facility and its ability to get back up and running after an unplanned incident. Some common threats to data storage include overstretched personnel that can result in human error, cyberattacks, power outages and difficulty following compliance requirements.

 

  1. Network recovery plan

Network recovery plans help organizations recover from an interruption of network services, including internet access, cellular data, local area networks and wide area networks. Due to the critical role networked services play in business operations, network recovery plans must clearly outline the steps, roles and responsibilities needed to quickly and effectively restore services after a network compromise.

 

  1. Virtualized recovery plan

A virtualized recovery plan relies on virtual machine (VM) instances that can be ready to operate within a couple of minutes of an interruption. Virtual machines are representations, or emulations, of physical computers that provide critical application recovery through high availability, or the ability of a system to operate continuously without failing.

Benefits of BCDR

Effective BCDR planning helps ensure business continuity and the prompt restoration of services after a business disruption. Here are some of the benefits companies with strong BCDR planning enjoy:

 

  • Less downtime

BCDR plans increase an organization’s ability get back up and running swiftly and smoothly after an unplanned incident.

 

  • Reduced costs

Enterprises with strong BCDR can reduce those costs by helping maintain business continuity throughout an incident and speeding recovery afterward.

 

  • Lower fines

Data breaches incur hefty fines when private customer information is compromised. Businesses that operate in heavily regulated sectors like healthcare and personal finance face especially costly penalties. Since these penalties are often tied to the duration and severity of a breach, maintaining business continuity and shortening response and recovery lifecycles is critical to keeping financial penalties low.

The Basics of a Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

Defining Business Impact Analysis

A BIA (business impact analysis) is essential in every organization. Often, companies don’t allocate enough time or resources to identify risk factors properly – and instead dive straight into creating a recovery strategy. Below will help you learn more about what a BIA involves and how to conduct one.

The BIA is a framework used to analyze the consequences of disruptions and how they impact your business. The analysis considers potential loss scenarios, the timing of disturbances, and the results affecting crucial products and services.

The Benefits of a BIA

A BIA is your starting point for your BCP (business continuity plan). It acts as a checklist to help you prepare your annual activities and can be beneficial in the following ways:

  • Recovery process: Your BCP should include the procedures or highest-impact assets for all the functions listed in your BIA. These prioritizations will provide transparency on where you can improve the BCP.
  • Organizes recovery: In a recovery situation, it’s crucial to have a disaster plan that defines the highest prioritized tasks. A BIA accomplishes this for you. You can use it to rank each priority and procure an “order of recovery” list within your BCP.
  • Prioritizes BCP testing: Your BIA will prioritize the areas you’ll be testing in your BCP. For instance, you may need to test critical assets annually and high-priority assets every 18 months.
  • Measures BCP testing effectiveness: A BIA provides sufficient measures to evaluate the BCP testing effectiveness. You can compare testing recovery timesto the maximum tolerable downtime (MTD). If recovery time takes longer than the MTD, you can reevaluate and make improvements.
  • Provides a rational approach to the backup rotation: Helps you to understand whether your backups achieve the desired results of your recovery point objective. Your IT staff can use this information to set backup schedules and rotations.

 

Steps in Conducting a Business Impact Analysis

To learn how to conduct a BIA, follow the steps below.

  1. Identify the Scope of the Business Impact Analysis
  2. Schedule Business Impact Analysis Interviews
  3. Execute BIA Interviews
  4. Document and Approve Each Department BIA Report
  5. Complete the BIA Summary

Testing DRP

 

  1. Validates the Effectiveness of the Plan
  • Ensures that all recovery procedures work as expected.
  • Identifies weaknesses or gaps in the plan before an actual disaster occurs.
  1. Ensures Business Continuity
  • Reduces downtime by confirming that critical systems can be restored quickly.
  • Helps prevent financial losses and reputational damage caused by extended disruptions.
  1. Improves Employee Preparedness
  • Ensures that employees understand their roles and responsibilities during a disaster.
  • Familiarizes teams with the recovery process, reducing confusion in high-pressure situations.
  1. Identifies Weaknesses and Areas for Improvement
  • Reveals vulnerabilities in infrastructure, backup strategies, and response procedures.
  • Helps organizations refine and update the DRP based on test results.
  1. Meets Compliance and Regulatory Requirements
  • Many industries (e.g., finance, healthcare) require regular DRP testing to comply with laws and regulations.
  • Ensures that audits and compliance checks are passed without penalties.
  1. Reduces Recovery Time and Costs
  • Helps optimize resource allocation for faster recovery.
  • Reduces potential financial losses associated with prolonged outages.
  1. Adapts to Changing Technology and Threats
  • Ensures that the plan is updated to account for new cyber threats and technological changes.
  • Tests backup solutions, cloud recovery, and security protocols to stay resilient.

How disasters could affect a business

Depending on specific circumstances, here are some examples of how the above types of disasters could significantly derail business continuity. Later, we’ll look at how disaster recovery planning and recovery testing can safeguard against such events, reduce recovery time in the future and help restore business continuity. Every business is different, however, and the disaster recovery plan that works for one organization may be entirely unsuitable for another.

  • Natural disasters – for example, fire, or flooding caused by heavy rain, or wind damage following storms. Disaster recovery testing for natural disasters involves the instigation of more specific emergency procedures , including evacuation processes.
  • Theft or sabotage – theft of computer equipment, or infiltration of IT security could result in loss of data and critical files, as well as potentially holding a business to ransom. System backup on a regular basis is an important part of a DR plan
  • Power cuts- loss of power could have serious consequences including prolonged downtime, affecting the ability to work effectively. Even a short period of downtime can result in a huge impact on a business’s bottom line. A solid DR plan will provide backup in the event of power failure.
  • IT network failure – With many organizations heavily relying on technology for the collaboration and communication needs, a network failure can disrupt important meetings and potentially result in the loss of clients or customers. Disaster recovery is an intrinsic part of every IT infrastructure.
  • Loss or illness of key staff – if any of your staff is central to the running of your business, consider what would happen if they were to leave or be incapacitated by illness. A disaster recovery plan could include additional personnel training as backup.
  • Outbreak of disease or infection – almost every business worldwide has recently experienced disaster recovery measures while dealing with the effects of the outbreak of an infectious disease. Disaster recovery testing in this case is ongoing, ensuring that in case of future incidents like this, a business is well prepared.

Crises affecting the reputation of business – disaster recovery is an important consideration for wholesale and retail businesses in the event of a crisis like a product recall. A disaster like this could severely damage company reputation and potentially have a crippling effect financially.

Getting started with disaster recovery testing

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.Disaster recovery testing, as we’ve already mentioned, is different for every business. However, there are some basic steps that need to be taken before the actual process of testing begins.

Step 1: Perform an audit of IT resources

Before resuming normal operations after a disaster, businesses must define “normal” by identifying all assets in their network. Creating an IT inventory helps streamline backup and recovery through consolidation.

Step 2: Decide what is mission critical

Auditing assets helps businesses identify redundant data that isn’t essential for system operations. Removing unnecessary data reduces backup size, saving storage space and processing power.

Step 3: Create specific roles and responsibilities for all involved in the DR plan

An effective disaster recovery plan involves every employee, not just automated testing. While automation checks technical aspects, employees must know their roles to restore operations quickly during a real disaster.

Step 4: Determine your recovery goals

Set RTOs and RPOs based on recovery urgency. Prioritize critical data, like financials, for faster recovery and frequent backups, while less important data can have longer recovery times.

Step 5: Implement a cloud data storage solution

Cloud-based backups protect data from cyberattacks and physical damage by automatically storing copies frequently, unlike manual methods. Remote backups ensure business continuity during disasters.

Disaster Recovery Plan Review

Disaster Recovery Audit

Here, the DR plan owner and other members of the team behind its development and implementation closely review the plan, to find any inconsistencies or missing elements.

Tabletop exercise

Much like a first rehearsal, stakeholders walk step by step through all the components of a disaster recovery plan. This helps determine if everyone knows what they are supposed to do in case of an emergency and uncovers any inconsistencies, missing information or errors.

Simulation

Simulating disaster scenarios is a good way to see if the disaster recovery procedures and resources, including backup systems and recovery sites allocated for disaster recovery and business continuity work.

A disaster recovery audit is a critical evaluation process aimed at assessing the effectiveness and readiness of an organization’s disaster recovery plan (DRP). This type of audit ensures that in the event of a disaster—whether natural, such as an earthquake or flood, or man-made, like a cyber attack—the organization has robust measures in place to recover data, maintain functionality, and continue operations with minimal disruption.

A comprehensive disaster recovery audit helps organizations identify vulnerabilities in their DRP and implement corrective actions to mitigate risks.

A comprehensive disaster recovery audit helps organizations identify vulnerabilities in their DRP and implement corrective actions to mitigate risks.

Disaster Recovery Audit Checklist

How to Conduct a Disaster Recovery Audit

The disaster recovery audit checklist serves as a critical tool in the auditing process. It provides a comprehensive list of items and areas to be reviewed, including but not limited to:

  • Documentation of the disaster recovery plan
  • Roles and responsibilities of involved personnel
  • Communication strategies and backup systems
  • Recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO)
  • Physical and cybersecurity measures
  • Backup data integrity tests
  • Training and awareness programs

 

This checklist helps auditors systematically evaluate each component of the disaster recovery plan to ensure nothing is overlooked.

Conducting a disaster recovery audit involves several key steps:

  1. Planning: Define the scope and objectives of the audit. Select the audit team and prepare the necessary tools and documents.
  2. Documentation Review: Assess the existing disaster recovery plan documentation for completeness and compliance with standards.
  3. Interviews: Conduct interviews with key personnel involved in disaster recovery planning and execution.
  4. Testing: Perform tests to verify that recovery procedures work effectively and within the stipulated time frames.
  5. Analysis: Evaluate the data gathered to identify any issues or gaps in the disaster recovery plan.
  6. Reporting: Prepare a comprehensive audit report detailing findings and recommendations.

IS INSURANCE & INSURANCE COVERAGE

Information System Insurance – A type of insurance that protects the business from risks related to IT systems, including cyberattacks, data breaches, and system failures.

Insurance Coverage – A broader term that refers to the extend of protection provided by an insurance policy, which includes various types such as health, life, property, and cybersecurity insurance.

IS Insurance Coverage

Cyber Liability Insurance – Covers legal expenses from data breaches.

Business Interruption Insurance – Covers losses due to IT system failures.

Errors & Omissions Insurance – Protects IT companies from lawsuits over service failures.

Data Breach Insurance – Covers notification costs, credit monitoring, and recovery expenses.

Ransomware Insurance – Helps pay for costs related to ransomware attacks.

Importance of IS Insurance

Financial Protection – Helps businesses recover from cyber incidents without major financial losses.

Legal Compliance – Some industries require businesses to have cyber insurance.

Business Continuity – Ensures companies can resume operations after IT disruptions.

Control Assessment

Control assessment, a crucial process in any organization, is designed to assess the effectiveness of existing controls and identify potential weaknesses.

The primary objective of control assessment is to ensure that these controls function as intended, thereby safeguarding the organization’s interests and assets.  

  

What is Control Assessment?  

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines control assessments as “the testing or evaluation of the controls in an information system or an organization to determine the extent to which the controls are implemented correctly, operating as intended, and producing the desired outcome with respect to meeting the security or privacy requirements for the system or the organization.”   

Control assessment involves testing and evaluating existing controls to ensure their effectiveness, identify vulnerabilities, and maintain compliance. This process is essential for organizations looking to protect their interests, assets, and reputation.  

 

Objective of Control Assessment

Control assessment is an evaluation mechanism that seeks to address the following key objectives:  

 

  1. Effectiveness Evaluation: The foremost objective of control assessment is to ascertain whether the controls in place are effective in mitigating risks and vulnerabilities. This evaluation helps organizations gauge the ability of their controls to prevent, detect, and respond to potential issues.
  2. Weakness Identification: Through control assessment, organizations can pinpoint any weaknesses or gaps in their existing controls. Identifying these areas of vulnerability is crucial in proactively addressing them to prevent potential security breaches or compliance failures.
  3. Compliance Verification: Many organizations are subject to regulatory requirements and industry standards that necessitate the implementation of specific controls. Control assessment helps verify compliance with these mandates, reducing the risk of non-compliance-related penalties and sanctions.  
  4. Continuous Improvement: Control assessment is not a one-time effort; it is an ongoing process aimed at continuous improvement. This ensures that controls remain effective in light of evolving threats and vulnerabilities.

 

The Importance of Control Assessment  

Regular control assessment is fundamental to an organization’s security, compliance, and overall operational well-being. It enables organizations to:  

 

  1. Mitigate Risks: By identifying and addressing weaknesses in controls, organizations can take proactive measures to mitigate risks effectively.
  2. Ensure Compliance: Compliance with regulatory requirements and industry standards is a critical objective, as non-compliance can lead to legal and financial consequences.
  3. Sustain Trust: Control assessment is key to maintaining trust with customers, partners, and stakeholders. It demonstrates an organization’s commitment to safeguarding sensitive information and data.
  4. Enhance Security Posture: An ongoing control assessment process empowers organizations to continuously improve their security controls, making them more resilient against evolving threats.   

 

Control Assessments vs Risk Assessments  

Feature

Risk Assessment

Control Assessment

Definition

Identifies and evaluates potential threats and vulnerabilities to an organization’s assets.

Evaluates the effectiveness of existing security controls in mitigating identified risks.

Purpose

Helps organizations understand possible risks and their impact on operations.

Ensures that implemented controls effectively reduce or mitigate identified risks.

Focus

Threats, vulnerabilities, likelihood of occurrence, and potential impact.

Policies, procedures, security mechanisms, and their effectiveness in risk mitigation.

Process

1. Identify assets and threats.
2. Analyze vulnerabilities.
3. Assess likelihood and impact.
4. Prioritize risks.

1. Review existing security controls.
2. Evaluate how well they mitigate risks.
3. Identify gaps or weaknesses.
4. Recommend improvements.

Outcome

A list of risks with prioritized severity levels (low, medium, high, critical).

A report on the effectiveness of controls and recommendations for improvements.

Example

Identifying potential risks of a data breach in an e-commerce website.

Checking if firewalls, encryption, and access controls are properly implemented and effective.

Compliance Testing

Compliance testing, also known as conformance testing, is a type of software testing to determine whether a software product, process, computer program, or system meets a defined set of internal or external standards before it’s released into production.

Internal standards are standards set by an organization.

For example, a web application development company might set the standard that all web pages must be responsive and pass penetration testing.

External standards are industry standards or regulations set outside an organization.

For example, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has established healthcare industry regulations requiring compliance risk assessments.

An integral part of the software testing life cycle, compliance testing ensures the compliance of deliverables of each phase of the development process.

 

What is the Objective of a Compliance Test?

The main objective of compliance testing is to ensure that a system or process adheres to established regulations, standards, specifications, and legislation. Compliance testing validates that a system functions according to both internal policies and external regulatory requirements. It provides stakeholders with evidence that requirements are being met consistently.

 

Some key objectives include:

  • Validating adherence to industry standards and government regulations to avoid non-compliance
  • Ensuring privacy, security, and data integrity according to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other policies
  • Reducing organizational risk and establishing trust through the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) or other management systems
  • Demonstrating due diligence to auditors and regulators
  • Assisting with regulatory compliance across multiple cloud environments
  •  

Compliance testing ensures that systems and business processes operate reliably and legally. Test automation and predefined testing methodology templates assist testers in conducting efficient and high-quality compliance testing programs across various development cycles. Analyzing test results identifies compliance risk areas and enables validation that software meets conformance criteria.

Ultimately, compliance testing methodology validates adherence to internal policies and external regulatory requirements. This software testing process guarantees stakeholders that systems always function legally.

 

What are the Requirements for a Compliance Test?

Some key requirements for effective compliance testing include:

  • Keeping up to date with the latest rules, laws, and policies within the domain
  • Having access to and understanding the whole system architecture and environments
  • Receiving support from business heads to freeze requirements during testing
  • Possessing domain experience to interpret and implement standards
  • Monitoring production systems post-deployment for continued compliance
  • Using automated testing tools to test end-to-end flows quickly
  • Maintaining audit trails and evidence of testing rigor

External Audit

An external audit assesses an organization’s preparedness to maintain operations and recover from disruptions such as cyberattacks, natural disasters, or system failures. These audits ensure compliance with regulatory standards and best practices.

Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) Requirements

Requirement

Description

DR Policy & Documentation

A formal Disaster Recovery (DR) plan outlining recovery strategies, roles, and responsibilities.

Data Backup & Restoration

Implement secure, regular backups with offsite/cloud storage to ensure data availability.

IT System Redundancy

Deploy redundant servers, failover systems, and alternative data centers for critical applications.

Cybersecurity Incident Response

Have procedures to detect, respond to, and recover from cyber threats (e.g., ransomware attacks).

Infrastructure & Network Resilience

Ensure power backups, network failover capabilities, and cloud-based solutions for system continuity.

Third-Party Vendor Preparedness

Assess vendors’ disaster recovery capabilities and their impact on business continuity.

DR Testing & Validation

Conduct disaster recovery tests, including failover drills, to verify the effectiveness of the DR plan.

 

Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is a process that involves making incremental changes to systems, processes, and products to achieve better results over time. It’s a crucial aspect of business management, ensuring that organizations remain competitive, efficient, and profitable in a constantly evolving marketplace. 

Here, we explore why the process of continuous improvement is the best way of generating a steady stream of innovation. Anyone might get lucky once; what’s needed is a way of “repeating the trick”. Managing the process isn’t a case of one size fits all, but a series of parallel journeys with different starting points leading to the same destination.

While we can make improvements in a random fashion, stumbling our way toward better ways of doing something, it makes sense to try to organize the process in a systematic fashion — capturing what someone learns and sharing it, rather than reinventing the same wheel. It’s all about finding ways to maintain progress, continuously searching for further improvements, and encouraging participation from everyone in the process.

Step-by-step CI process

Step 1: Define the process

Questions that are relevant to ask when defining the process include:

  • What’s the objective?
  • Who’s available to help?
  • Is the issue critical to improving quality?
  • What’s the project scope and timeline?

Step 2: Measure the process

The next step is to measure the process, which involves gathering data about the process’s current performance.

Step 3: Analyze the data

Analyze collected data to identify and prioritize root causes of inefficiencies, focusing on those with the greatest negative impact on desired outcomes.

Step 4: Develop solutions

Crowdsource feasible solutions by involving all stakeholders. Ensure solutions address root causes, leading to strategic improvements in processes, equipment, and training.

Step 5: Implement the solution

Once a solution has been selected, it’s time to communicate the changes and improvements to all stakeholders and move forward with implementation. It’s important to monitor implementation closely to ensure that it’s successful.

Step 6: Monitor and measure the results

Monitor and measure the improved process to ensure success. Use previous data to assess effectiveness and determine if further improvements are needed.

 

Step 7: Standardize the process

Once the solution has proved successful, the process should be standardized. This involves documenting the changes made to the process and ensuring that they are communicated to all stakeholders. This step ensures that the improvements are sustainable and can be replicated consistently.

Step 8: Repeat the process

The final step is to repeat the process. Continuous improvement is an ongoing process, and it’s important to continually assess processes in order to identify areas for improvement. By continuously improving processes, organizations can remain competitive and achieve better results over time.

Key Takeaways

Business continuity plans ensures that a business will can continue its operation when a disaster happens.

 

Disaster recovery strategies should include provisions for restoring data at a site or cloud data centers that’s safe from the disruptions.

 

BCDR often involves trade-offs, and organizations must weigh how quickly they need to recover from an unplanned IT outage, the amount of data they’re willing to lose, and the cost and complexity of maintaining their backup systems.

 

Identification of risk will help the organization to prepare for mitigation of potential damage or eliminating the risk itself.

 

Business impact analysis determines which processes and systems are essential for operation

            RTO (Recovery Time Objective)- maximum acceptable downtime.

RPO (Recovery Point Objective): Maximum acceptable data loss measured in time

Testing Disaster recovery plan ensures that the DRP will work as intended and meet the recovery objectives.

Auditing DRP ensures that it will cover all critical business functions, IT systems, and potential disaster scenarios.

CIP helps in identifying vulnerabilities, threats and inefficiencies before they escalate into major issues.

References