Disruption is inevitable. Whether it’s a cyberattack, a power failure, a natural disaster, or even a software update gone wrong, every business faces risks that can interrupt operations. A well-developed Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) plan helps minimise those risks by ensuring your business can recover quickly, limit damage, and maintain essential services.
Here is a clear breakdown of the key components your BCDR plan should include — and why each one is essential to resilience.
Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis
Start by identifying potential threats to your business. These may include cyberattacks, infrastructure failures, software issues, supply chain disruptions, or environmental events. Each threat should be assessed in terms of likelihood and potential impact.
A business impact analysis will help you understand how various incidents could affect different parts of your organisation. This includes financial losses, service delays, reputational harm, and legal or compliance risks. Prioritising these risks ensures your response focuses on the most important areas first.
Cybersecurity remains one of the most common sources of disruption. According to the UK Government’s 2025 Cyber Security Breaches Survey, just over four in ten businesses (43%) and three in ten charities (30%) experienced a cyber breach or attack in the past 12 months.
Inventory of Critical Assets, Systems and Data
In a crisis, you need to know exactly what needs to be protected and restored. That begins with a complete and accurate inventory of your digital infrastructure. List all critical assets, including servers, networks, databases, cloud platforms, essential software, communication systems and hardware.
Also include the location of key data, the frequency of updates, and the person responsible for maintaining it. Categorise assets by their importance to operations so that recovery can occur in the correct order.
Without this inventory, recovery teams may waste time trying to locate missing information or restore non-essential systems first.
Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO)
These two metrics define the recovery goals that will shape your entire plan. RTO is the maximum time your systems can be down before the impact becomes unacceptable. RPO is the maximum amount of data loss, measured in time, that your business can tolerate.
For example, an online retail platform may need an RTO of one hour and an RPO of 15 minutes, whereas an internal HR tool might allow longer delays. These metrics help determine your backup frequency, data replication methods, failover requirements and service level agreements.
Without defined RTO and RPO, it’s impossible to design a recovery approach that meets business needs.
Backup and Restoration Procedures
This section outlines how your data is protected and how you bring systems back online after an incident. Document what data is backed up, how often, where it is stored and what technology is used. Specify how to access backups and the steps for restoring services for each system or application.
It is not enough to have backups — they must be tested regularly to confirm they work. Backup testing is just as important as backup creation. Include a schedule for testing and assign responsibility for overseeing these processes.
Crisis Communication Strategy
During a disruption, people need clarity. Your BCDR plan should include a communication strategy that ensures staff, customers, suppliers, regulators and other stakeholders receive accurate and timely updates.
Include contact details for internal teams and external partners, define who is authorised to send messages, and choose primary and backup communication channels. Use clear, pre-approved templates to speed up messaging under pressure.
A strong communication plan reduces panic, maintains trust and keeps everyone aligned while recovery is in progress.
Defined Roles and Responsibilities
Clear roles and responsibilities are essential during a recovery effort. Your plan should identify the people who will lead incident response, oversee technical recovery, handle communications, liaise with third parties and ensure compliance.
List primary and backup contacts for each role and provide clear guidance on escalation procedures. This structure ensures nothing falls through the cracks and allows for swift, coordinated decision-making when every minute counts.
Training should be provided so all key personnel know what is expected of them before a crisis occurs.
Third-Party Dependencies and Supply Chain Resilience
Modern businesses rely on third-party vendors for services like cloud hosting, data processing, logistics and software. These relationships need to be accounted for in your BCDR plan.
Document what each provider is responsible for, how to contact them in a crisis, and what contingency plans are in place if they are affected. Include any relevant service level agreements and consider whether alternative suppliers are available if one goes offline.
This section helps ensure your business is not vulnerable to external failures beyond your control.
Testing, Maintenance and Continuous Improvement
Even the best plan will fail if it is not tested. Regular testing through simulations, scenario walkthroughs or full-scale recovery exercises is essential to validate your approach. Use test results to refine your plan and address gaps.
Review your Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan at least annually and after any significant changes, such as new systems, mergers, office relocations or regulatory shifts.
Why It Matters
Disruptions are more common than many businesses realise. According to industry research, the average cost of a data centre outage now exceeds $9,000 per minute. The impact goes beyond money, affecting trust, operations and long-term reputation.
A detailed business continuity and disaster recovery plan gives you the structure to respond quickly, restore operations efficiently and protect what matters most — your people, your data and your business continuity.
Laila Azzahra is a professional writer and blogger that loves to write about technology, business, entertainment, science, and health.