2026 update: Business continuity is still the wider plan for keeping the organisation operating; disaster recovery is still the IT-focused path back to working systems and data. What has grown is the need to include ransomware playbooks and SaaS (for example Microsoft 365) recovery in both conversations — not only site loss or hardware failure. See SaaS backup.

When it comes to keeping your business — and your IT — running, there are several things to consider.

What will you do if your network goes down?

What will happen in the event of a data breach?

How are you backing up and storing your data, and is it safe and secure?

What would happen if a flood or fire shut down your head office?

While you can plan for many things in business, some things can come out of nowhere and catch you completely off-guard. That’s where business continuity, disaster recovery and contingency planning come in.

While they won’t stop a mission-critical event from occurring, with the right plans and strategies in place, you can mitigate the impacts of certain events and minimise the disruption they cause.

However, to develop a robust business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategy, you need to first understand what each entails.

What is business continuity?

Business continuity is all about having plans and solutions in place to ensure that if your workplace, systems or data became inaccessible, your business would still be able to operate with as little downtime as possible.

While unforeseen events like a flood, fire or power outage could prevent your business from operating normally, so could things like cyber attack, theft, human error, accidental damage or the sudden departure of a key employee.

Events that force sudden remote working — including public-health restrictions in recent years — showed how quickly a continuity plan is tested. Firms that already had remote access, secure data access and clear communications adapted faster than those improvising under pressure.

Some of the things you’ll need to include in an effective business continuity strategy include how you facilitate remote working, how you are backing up and securing your critical data and whether you can relocate to temporary business premises.

It’s also important to consider whether staff can be deployed to alternative roles and if you can fall back on alternative contractors or suppliers should your main ones become unavailable.

What is disaster recovery?

Disaster recovery is the process of getting your business operations back to normal in the event of a disaster.

If your business has suffered a critical event that has disrupted its normal operations, a disaster recovery plan will help you transition back to business as usual.

One of the key things you’ll need to consider when creating a disaster recovery plan is what software or services you need in place to help get you back to normal.

This is known as Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS).

With DRaaS, a third party replicates and hosts physical or virtual servers and provides failover into a recovery environment (often cloud-based). See What is DRaaS and why is it important?

As a result, DRaaS enables your business operations to continue virtually, in a secure cloud location, before your primary systems are restored.

Having a DRaaS solution in place means that if your on-premise or offsite data becomes unavailable, you can quickly get your business back up and running by automatically switching to your replicated data in the cloud when disaster strikes.

However, having a DRaaS solution in place won’t solve your problem entirely.
You’ll also need to consider who is responsible for carrying out recovery tasks and how you will go about recovering from infrastructure failure or data loss.

If you don’t have the resource or expertise in-house to oversee this, then investing in the services of an external BCDR specialist can pay dividends.

What is contingency planning?

A contingency plan combines both your business continuity and disaster recovery efforts into a single document.

It will outline exactly what steps your business will need to take in the event of an incident that could significantly disrupt your normal business operations.

This might be because your physical workspace becomes inaccessible, there is a problem with your IT infrastructure or network, or you lose a key supplier or member of staff.

It’s all about documenting your business-critical operations, then thinking about what could be done in each scenario to minimise the risks to your business.

It’s vital to ensure this plan is reviewed and updated regularly. Experience shows conditions can change quickly — review the plan on a fixed schedule and after major IT or supplier changes.

So, doing all you can to prepare yourself and put in place the measures to minimise disruption and downtime will help you weather the storm.

How can BCDR help?

BCDR provides managed business continuity and disaster recovery so SMEs and MSP clients can restore systems after critical incidents. If you want a clearer BC/DR design, talk to us. Relevant services: onsite business continuity & disaster recovery, backup and offsite DR and BCDR solutions for SMEs.

Book a free consultation · [email protected] · 01386 898324

Frequently asked questions

Is disaster recovery part of business continuity?

Usually yes. DR is the technology and data recovery piece that supports the wider continuity plan covering people, premises and processes.

Do I need both a BCP and a DRP?

You need both ideas documented. Smaller firms often combine them in one contingency plan, as long as IT recovery steps, owners and test dates are explicit.

Where does backup fit?

Backup supplies the recovery points DR depends on. Continuity planning decides which services must return first and how the business operates while IT is restored.