Faster Disaster Recovery

CHAPTER 1Business Disaster Defined

How do you define a disaster? What about a business disaster? Is it different? Or is it the same?

As pointed out in the preface, although this is a relevant question—especially in this day and age where disasters seem to make the news weekly, if not daily—it’s one that a number of businesses choose to ignore.

Technically, a business disaster can be defined as:

1. Any unplanned interruption of normal business functions or processes for an unacceptable period of time.
2. A situation or event that overwhelms capacity and/or necessitates a request for external assistance.

In either case, when an organization or a department within an organization can’t function normally, it’s incurring extra expenses, losing revenue, or both. None of these are good.

When breaking down the definition, it’s important to understand that every company defines “interruption” and “unacceptable period of time” differently.

For example, an accounting firm may be able to function without access to data files for 24 hours, whereas a financial institution may find being without data for more than 20 minutes totally unacceptable.

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a disaster is “any unplanned event that can cause deaths or significant injuries to employees, customers, or the public; or that can shut down your organization, disrupt operations, cause physical or environmental damage, or threaten the facility’s financial standing or public image.”¹

Based ...