DRP, BCP: what happens to my business in the event of a major incident?

An outage, a cyberattack, a natural disaster: no business is completely immune to a major incident. What makes the difference isn't avoiding every risk, it's being able to keep operating during the crisis and then get back up to speed quickly. That's exactly the role of the BCP and the DRP.

BCP: keeping your business running during the incident

The BCP (Business Continuity Plan) aims to keep your critical operations running during an incident. It relies on advance preparation: identifying your business's critical functions, then planning the means to keep them running despite the crisis - alternative communication systems, backup work sites, specific procedures. In short, the BCP covers everything that keeps you operational when something breaks.

DRP: restoring systems after the incident

The DRP (Disaster Recovery Plan) focuses on the rapid restoration of IT systems after an incident. This is the part that lets you recover your data from backups, get damaged infrastructure running again, and restart your critical applications. Two technical concepts frame it:

• the RTO (Recovery Time Objective): the maximum targeted time to restore service - how long the interruption can last;
• the RPO (Recovery Point Objective): the maximum amount of data you're willing to lose, measured in time - for example, going back to the backup from an hour ago.

Two complementary plans

The BCP manages the crisis while it's happening; the DRP takes over afterward to restore normal operations. They're often designed together, as part of an overall risk management strategy. Together, they help your organization prepare, respond effectively, and recover as well as possible: limiting financial, material, and reputational losses in the face of a technical failure, a cyberattack, or a natural disaster.

And what does this mean for you, in practice? Asking yourself these questions today - how long can my business afford to be down, how much data can I afford to lose - is already a form of anticipation. And anticipating always costs less than suffering the consequences.

Updated on: 17/07/2026