What is the difference between a Business Continuity Plan and a Disaster Recovery Plan?

The main difference is that a disaster recovery plan is the policies, process and procedures related to preparing for recovery or continuation of technology infrastructure critical to your credit union after a natural or human-induced disaster. Disaster recovery is a subset of business continuity. Disaster recovery focuses on the IT or technology systems that support business functions and how to return your IT to normal operations.
Business Continuity Plans involve planning for keeping all aspects of a business functioning in the midst of disruptive events. While credit unions usually have a somewhat functional business continuity plan, many credit unions lack most of the critical information needed for a functional disaster recovery plan.

The most important questions to ask yourself about your DRP:

• Is your IT infrastructure optimally configured to recover from a disaster?
• Does your credit union have detailed, professional documentation of the setup and configuration of your existing information technology infrastructure?
• If you answered no to either of the above, how do you hope to resume normal operations within a reasonable amount of time and cost in the event of a disaster?

Every IT decision you make affects your credit union's ability to recover from a disaster. These decisions include deciding to rely on the memory and informal notes of staff and vendors during a disaster.

Nothing is more critical to a disaster recovery plan than strategically designing and building your IT infrastructure from the beginning and documenting the knowledge of how to completely rebuild any and all parts of your technology infrastructure. The regulations require a multitude of items to be documented in your disaster recovery plan like your RTO's (recovery time objective) and RPO's (recovery point objective) for your systems and functions. These do help you prioritize what you will recover first, but they are no substitute for a great strategy and system that is well documented.

If you would like to talk to us about documentation or disaster recovery planning, please contact:

Paul Elder 614-848-5400 ext 121 or email Paul
Larry Krietemeyer 614-848-5400 ext 143 or email Larry