These two terms get treated as synonyms, but they answer different questions. Disaster recovery asks "how do we get our systems back?" Business continuity asks "how do we keep operating while that's happening?" Most Perth businesses have thought about the first and never written down the second.
Disaster Recovery: Getting Systems Back
A disaster recovery plan is technical and IT-owned: which systems get restored first, from what backup, and within what timeframe. It's measured in concrete numbers, see our guide to RTO and RPO, and it lives or dies on whether backups have actually been tested, not just scheduled.
Business Continuity: Keeping the Business Running
A business continuity plan covers everything disaster recovery doesn't: who calls key clients if systems are down for a day, what the manual fallback process is for taking orders or payments, where staff work from if the office is inaccessible, and who's authorised to make decisions if the usual person can't be reached. None of this is a technical restore, it's operational planning for the gap between an incident happening and systems being back.
Why the Gap Between Them Matters
A well-executed disaster recovery plan can still mean a genuinely bad day for the business if nobody planned for the hours or days it takes to execute. A retail business with no way to take payment during a system outage, or a professional services firm with no way to reach clients about a missed deadline, both have a working recovery plan and a real continuity gap. Our guide to running an incident response drill tests exactly this kind of gap before a real incident finds it for you.
Building a Basic Continuity Plan
Start small: identify your top three or four processes that can't simply stop (taking payment, responding to urgent client requests, meeting hard deadlines), write down the manual fallback for each, and name who's responsible for triggering it. Pair this with your existing first-hour incident response so the technical and operational responses run in parallel, not one after the other.
Frequently Asked Questions
Don't most small businesses only need one of these?
A disaster recovery plan is the higher priority if you only have time for one, most incidents are IT failures where getting systems back is the whole problem. But any business that deals directly with customers or has strict deadlines benefits from at least a basic continuity plan alongside it.
How long does a business continuity plan take to put together?
A basic version, covering your top three or four critical processes, can be drafted in a day or two of focused work. It doesn't need to be exhaustive to be useful, a short, realistic plan beats a long one nobody's read.
Who should own the continuity plan, IT or the business?
The business. IT owns disaster recovery, the technical restore, but continuity planning covers people, communication, and manual workarounds, decisions that belong to whoever runs the affected part of the business, not the IT provider.
Does cyber insurance require both?
Increasingly, yes, insurers are asking about incident response and continuity planning alongside technical controls when assessing a policy. Worth checking your specific policy's requirements rather than assuming a backup plan alone satisfies it.
We can help you build the continuity plan that sits alongside your disaster recovery plan.
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Book a Free IT Health CheckFor related reading, see Disaster Recovery Plan for Perth Businesses, What Is RTO and RPO?, and Running an Incident Response Drill.