The terms ‘disaster recovery’ and ‘business continuity’ are often interchangeably used but they mean very different things. If you don’t know the difference, it’s easy to be lulled into a false sense of security and make short-sighted data backup decisions.
What’s the Difference?
Disaster recovery is all about your data. It’s the process of backing up files so that, if you need to, you can recover your critical business information. Business continuity has a much broader scope. This is a plan to continue operations during and after a catastrophic event. Recovering data is part of it, along with making sure employees have a safe place to work and customers can continue to receive products and services with as little disruption as possible. It’s important to understand the difference so you can ensure your disaster recovery system aligns with your business continuity plan.
In the event of a ransomware attack or system failure, for example, a good disaster recovery system enables you to retrieve your data with little or no business disruption. Ideally, you can roll-back your data to a time before the problem occurred. If, however, your facilities or the entire city is hit by a natural disaster, data alone won’t keep your operations running. From an IT perspective, you must be able to access that data from a different location (as indicated in your business continuity plan) and recover your entire infrastructure, such as software, computers, and servers.
When it comes to selecting a data backup solution, there are literally thousands of options – including offline, onsite and cloud storage. At Zantek, we partner with industry-leading vendors so we can address all of your business needs with one cost-effective solution. We’ll ensure you have the right backup solution that aligns with your business continuity plan and keeps your business going if disaster strikes.
Relevant links:
- Ask a data backup question: Email us
- Article: Protecting your business from the unthinkable
- eBook: The business guide to ransomware by Datto