What is the difference between the term Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity?
Many individuals use these two terms interchangeably. We at Business Continuity Strategies feel the two terms represent the Genesis of our discipline. Early in the days of large mainframe computers, the tasks associated with planning for an incident causing an interruption in business processing due to a lack of IT services was called Disaster Recovery and the process was driven by the IT department. Over time, it became apparent that far more time was needed to develop alternate, manual processes and procedures to help key business units cope with interruptions in their ability to perform their mission critical work. This planning process was called Business Continuity (or Contingency) Planning. Today, for at least 78% of the planners polled, Business Continuity Planning is considered the politically correct way to refer to the discipline of planning for interruptions to key technology and business processes.
