How are business continuity and disaster recovery distinct?
While business continuity is proactive, disaster recovery is more reactive. When you are thinking of business continuity, you will consider processes which a business can deploy to make sure that its mission-critical data and operations are not affected because of a disaster. So, business continuity will focus on planning for long term challenges. Disaster recovery on the other hand, will include specific measures which businesses take to resume their functions following a disaster. So DR will typically occur after a disaster has already taken place. Response times may take up to several days on certain occasions. While BC will focus on the enterprise mainly, DR will focus on the technical infrastructure. So, disaster recovery is basically a part of the BC process. It is performed to ensure that data remains accessible even after a disaster. But business continuity solutions will also take into account risks and plans which a business must implement to sustain itself during the crisis.
How are business continuity and disaster recovery similar to one another?
Although both BC and DR are not synonymous, there is indeed some likeness between these two types of solutions. Both these solutions will take into account events which have not yet occurred, whether it is due to calamities, human errors or cyber crimes. The main purpose of BCDR is to ensure that the business continues to run as it did before. So, in most organizations, it is very often the same team members which look after both the disaster recovery and business continuity initiatives.