Cloud Backup, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: What are the differences?
Cloud backup, disaster recovery and business continuity: what are the differences?
Cloud backup, disaster recovery and business continuity are all types of services that help companies protect their data. But what exactly do these three terms mean? What are the differences between them? And why is it so important to have cloud backup in DR and BC plans?
CLOUD BACKUP: is a solution that stores data in the cloud; inexpensive and ideal for those who need an off-the-shelf tool and prefer to manage the solution completely on their own. Cloud backup is also an effective way to protect against ransomware attacks, which can be devastating if the company's critical files have been encrypted by malicious software. Cloud backup is the first component of a comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery plan.
DISASTER RECOVERY (DR): is not backup, business continuity, or testing of both but a continuous process that helps reduce risk by ensuring protection and recovery of data and services in the event of disruption or disaster. It includes backup and recovery processes, but also considers having a computational environment ready to use in the event of a disaster. This means that both data and computational services must be taken into account when planning DR. DR makes it possible, in a disaster situation, to restore data from backups and operate them safely.
BUSINESS CONTINUITY (BC): is a strategy to ensure that critical functions preserve their operations even during periods of disruption such as those caused by disasters such as floods, earthquakes, or fires. BC is the set of plans and procedures needed to deal with all kinds of emergencies, from cyber attacks to power outages at work sites where a backup generator does not yet exist, or if it exists but fails during an emergency situation for whatever reason.
The risk of losing data, the risk of business interruption, and image damage are three critical areas that every company or simple vat number must be aware of when they think about their businesses.
Information and data have incalculable value and are the basis of your business; without them, no business can be conducted. If a loss of data (Data Loss) occurs or if it is corrupted/compromised, you may face economic penalties and will be forced to start from scratch also involving loss of time and extra work.
Efficiency and requirements of DR and BC plans.
Talking about DR and BC plans, it is inevitable to ask what are the evaluation factors for a good plan or to minimize risks and their impacts on business.
In this case there are tools that can support the assessment:
- Recovery Time Object (RTO): i.e., the time required to restore a specific piece of data or set of data. This parameter can also vary significantly depending on the type of object and its criticality: several hours for data or services with little business impact (e.g., attendance management system) to a few minutes for highly critical data or services that result in loss of revenue per instant of downtime (e.g., warehouse management or production machinery).
- Recovery Point Object (RPO): i.e., the age of the nearest recovery point. This parameter, too, can vary widely: from days for data that is little manipulated or subject to change (e.g., past years' data history) to the need for instant disaster recovery so that not a single piece of data is lost (e.g., online sales systems for e-commerce-based companies).
- Business Impact Analysis (BIA): The collection of business processes, services and data classified by criticality, dependencies and recovery priorities.
An accurate BIA enables and greatly facilitates the definition of DR and BC plans as it allows for a 360-degree look at what is really critical to the business and therefore what needs to be prioritized in case of service disruption or disaster. Many structured entities lean toward conducting this type of analysis through third-party companies with well-defined and broken-in methodologies, other developing entities prefer to analyze their own processes and related critical issues and only use third-party vendors to coordinate BC plans to ensure success.
DR and BC planning are your backbone
There are some fundamental differences between disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC). DR is part of BC, but not vice versa; you can bypass DR if necessary, but not BC completely! Finally: BC is a continuous process that ensures that systems remain up-to-date and secure at all times while with DR we are talking about an environment where you can undertake the necessary activities to restore some or all of your data and services as needed.
DR and BC planning are the most important part of the business continuity plan. They serve as the backbone for an organization, enabling it to take action in the event of a disaster or emergency, thus avoiding any kind of financial loss or business interruption for customers. Therefore, it is critical to ensure that the backup services at the base, are in line with your overall strategy, so that they can be seamlessly integrated into processes such as disaster recovery and business continuity planning.
If you consider DR and BC plans as your backbone, you can be sure that they will help your company survive in the event of a disaster. A good plan is a necessity for any business that needs resilience or has to comply with specific regulations (NIS, art something for freelancers, ...). The more robust your business continuity plan is, the more your company will survive an incident without damage or data loss.
Establishing a DR and BC plan is as important as making sure it works and is as effective. It is imperative to schedule a test at least every six months to avoid unpleasant surprises in time of need. A scheduled test simulates real-world conditions by interrupting, intentionally, production systems in order to verify beyond compliance with RTO and RPO parameters the effectiveness and existence of sufficient resources for a recovery from such interruptions without impacting customer service levels.
What can we do concretely for you?
Backup management is critical to every business; failure to optimally manage or implement a business continuity plan exposes you to the risk of data loss, business interruption, and extensive image damage.
If you would like to learn more about everything related to our cybersecurity services, and find out which plan best suits your business and needs, contact us at sales@vvlab.it or visit our website. Together we can work out an offer customized to your business model!
