Looking for IT Support In Wichita? Call Us Now! (316) 788-1372
When people talk about business continuity, backups are often one of the first things that come to mind. And for good reason. Having reliable copies of important information is an essential part of protecting a business.
But backup, recovery, and business continuity aren’t interchangeable terms. Each addresses a different part of the bigger picture. Understanding that distinction can make continuity planning much easier and help you focus your attention on what your business actually needs.
Backup: Do We Have a Copy?
A backup is a copy of data or information that can be used if the original is lost, damaged, or otherwise unavailable. Backups are an important safeguard. They give you a way to recover information rather than having to recreate it from scratch. But a backup answers a fairly specific question: Do we have a copy of what we need?
Recovery: Can We Restore It?
Recovery is the process of getting systems, applications, or information back into a usable state.
Depending on the situation, that could involve restoring business data, applications, servers or other infrastructure, employee access, devices, and the other technology the business relies on. Recovery is about restoring capability. A business may have good backups and well-defined recovery procedures, but there are still questions about how the organization operates while those systems are being restored. That’s where business continuity comes into the conversation.
Business Continuity: How Does the Business Keep Moving?
Business continuity takes a broader view. Instead of looking only at technology, it considers how the business operates and what it needs in order to continue operating when something isn’t available. That includes technology, but it can also include:
The goal isn’t necessarily to keep everything operating exactly as it normally would. The goal is to understand what the business needs to keep moving and how those needs can be supported when normal operations are interrupted.
One of the most useful places to begin a continuity conversation isn’t with a list of systems, but with the business itself. What are the activities that keep the organization operating? What does your team need to serve customers? What information do employees need to do their jobs? Which processes depend on specific applications or vendors?
Once you’ve identified those things, you can start mapping the technology and other dependencies behind them. For example, an organization might identify customer service as a critical business activity.
That activity may depend on:
The CRM is important. But the CRM isn’t the entire continuity picture.
Understanding the relationship between the business activity and everything it depends on gives you a much clearer picture of what needs to be protected and how it should be supported.
Another benefit of looking at continuity from a business perspective is that it helps establish priorities. Not every system, application, or process has the same impact on the business. Some capabilities may need to be restored quickly. Others may be able to wait. Some may have a reasonable workaround. Others may not.
Those decisions shouldn’t be based solely on the technology. They should reflect how the business actually operates. A useful question is: How important is this capability to the business, and how long can we reasonably operate without it?
That answer helps inform everything from recovery priorities to technology investments. It’s also one reason there isn’t a single business continuity strategy that works for every organization. The right approach depends on your business, your priorities, and the way your people work.
Backups are still a critical piece. In fact, you can think of the three concepts as building on one another:
Backup: We have a copy.
Recovery: We can restore what we need.
Business continuity: We understand how the business keeps moving while we’re working through the disruption.
Each answers a different question. And each supports a different part of being prepared. The important thing isn’t choosing between them. It’s understanding how they fit together.
If you’re evaluating your current continuity planning, you don’t have to begin with a technical checklist. Start with something much simpler: What does our business need in order to keep moving? From there, you can identify the people, processes, information, technology, and outside partners those activities depend on. Then you can determine where backups, recovery capabilities, alternate processes, and other preparations fit. That’s a much more useful starting point than simply asking, “Do we have backups?”
Having a backup is important. Knowing what you’re protecting, why it matters, how you would recover it, and how the business would continue in the meantime is where business continuity really begins.
Fill in your information below and we will email you our complete guide to business IT security.
