Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

What you will be able to do

• You will be able to distinguish business continuity, disaster recovery, and incident response and explain how they fit together.
• You will be able to run a business impact analysis and rank processes by their recovery priority.
• You will be able to set defensible RTO and RPO targets and tie them to recovery strategies.
• You will be able to compare recovery strategies (backup, hot/warm/cold sites, cloud) and justify a choice against cost and risk.
• You will be able to draft a usable disaster recovery plan with activation criteria and step-by-step procedures.
• You will be able to write a business continuity plan and a crisis communication plan that work during a real disruption.
• You will be able to design and run BCP/DR exercises, from tabletops to full failover tests.
• You will be able to build a maintenance and review cycle that keeps plans current.

What is inside

4 modules, 8 lessons. Each module ends in a graded quiz and most carry an assignment.

1. 01

   Foundations: Continuity, Recovery, and Response

   Before you write a single plan, you need to know what each discipline is for. This module defines business continuity, disaster recovery, and incident response, then shows how the business impact analysis turns vague worries into ranked priorities.

   2 lessons · 5 quiz questions

2. 02

   Recovery Targets and Strategies

   With your BIA in hand, you can set the numbers that drive everything else. This module explains RTO and RPO, then walks through the recovery strategies you choose between to meet those targets and how to write the DR plan.

   2 lessons · 5 quiz questions · assignment

3. 03

   The Business Continuity Plan and Crisis Communication

   DR restores the technology, but the business has to keep running in the meantime. This module covers how to write a business continuity plan around people and processes, and how to communicate during a crisis so the disruption does not become a second disaster.

   2 lessons · 5 quiz questions

4. 04

   Exercises, Testing, and Maintenance

   An untested plan is a hypothesis. This module covers the range of exercises from tabletops to full failover tests, how to capture lessons, and the maintenance cycle that keeps your BCP/DR program current as the organization changes.

   2 lessons · 5 quiz questions · assignment