Yes, your CPA firm needs both a business continuity plan and disaster recovery plan. Business continuity explains how your firm will keep serving clients during a major disruption. Disaster recovery explains how your firm will restore technology, systems, and data after an outage or incident. The plans support each other, but they solve different problems. A backup alone does not tell employees where to work, how to communicate, which applications to restore first, or who has the authority to make urgent decisions.
For an accounting firm, that distinction becomes especially important during tax season, when even a short interruption can delay work across the entire firm.
Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan: What Is the Difference?
I like to explain the difference by looking at the questions each plan answers.
- – A business continuity plan asks: How will our firm continue operating during a disruption?
- – A disaster recovery plan asks: How will we restore the technology and data affected by that disruption?
Business continuity has the broader scope. It covers the firm’s people, processes, locations, communications, vendors, and technology. Disaster recovery sits within that broader strategy and concentrates on restoring IT operations.
Imagine that a water line breaks above your server room at your Scottsdale office. Water damages the equipment, and employees cannot safely work in the building. Your business continuity plan should explain:
- – Where employees will work
- – How employees will access essential applications
- – How leaders will communicate with the team
- – How the firm will notify clients
- – Who can make operational decisions
- – Which services the firm must maintain first
- – How employees will work securely outside the office
Your disaster recovery plan should explain:
- – How the IT team will assess the damaged systems
- – Whether the firm can run a virtual copy of the server
- – Which data backups the team will use
- – Which applications the team will restore first
- – How long restoration should take
- – How the team will confirm that restored data remains accurate and secure
The continuity plan keeps the business moving. The recovery plan restores the technology that supports the business.
What Does Business Continuity Cover?
A strong business continuity plan accounts for more than a power outage or failed server. It considers any event that could prevent the firm from operating normally. That might include:
- – A fire, flood, or sewage problem that closes the office
- – A prolonged internet or utility outage
- – A ransomware attack
- – The failure of an important cloud provider
- – The unexpected departure or absence of a key employee
- – A regional event that prevents employees from reaching the office
- – A public health emergency that forces the team to work remotely
COVID gave every business a clear example of a continuity event. Firms suddenly had to determine how employees would work, communicate, access files, and serve clients without coming into the office.
A continuity plan should also account for people. What happens if a managing partner, IT employee, or another key decision-maker becomes unavailable? A firm should function as a living organization that can survive beyond any one person.
What Does Disaster Recovery Cover?
Disaster recovery focuses on the systems, applications, devices, and information the firm needs to operate. For a CPA firm, that usually includes:
- – Tax and audit software
- – Practice management and workflow platforms
- – Microsoft 365 email, Teams, and SharePoint
- – Client portals
- – Document management systems
- – Local and cloud-hosted servers
- – Network equipment and firewalls
- – Employee computers
- – Identity and access systems
- – Financial, payroll, and billing applications
- – Data backups
Your disaster recovery plan should rank these resources by criticality. If several systems fail at once, your IT team needs to know which one to restore first. During busy season, restoring tax software, client files, identity services, and email may take priority over less critical administrative applications.
Why Preparedness Requires More Than Backups
Backups play an essential role in recovery, but they represent only one part of preparedness.
A backup gives you a copy of your data. It does not automatically give you a functioning server, a secure network, access to your applications, or a plan for employees and clients.
I compare recovery to recovering from pneumonia. Once the infection clears, you still cannot expect to run a marathon the next morning. The immediate crisis may have ended, but returning to full strength takes time.
The same principle applies to an IT incident. Your firm may have clean backup data, but the IT team may still need to:
- – Replace damaged hardware
- – Remove malicious software
- – Rebuild user accounts
- – Configure network equipment
- – Reinstall applications
- – Restore large volumes of data
- – Test integrations
- – Confirm security before reconnecting systems
- – Validate the accuracy of restored files
That work can take hours or days unless the firm prepares in advance.
A complete business continuity plan and disaster recovery plan should define two important measurements:
- – Recovery time objective, or RTO: The longest acceptable time a system can remain unavailable.
- – Recovery point objective, or RPO: The maximum amount of recent data the firm can afford to lose.
If your firm can tolerate losing no more than four hours of work, backing up data once every 24 hours will not meet your needs. If being offline for a full day would create a serious financial problem, your recovery strategy must support a much shorter restoration time.
Preparedness starts with a practical financial question: How much money will the firm lose for every hour it cannot work?
CPA-Specific Continuity and Recovery Examples
Consider a CPA firm with an office near Camelback Road in Phoenix. A major utility failure cuts power to the building during the week before a tax deadline.
The business continuity plan directs employees to work remotely, provides a secondary communication channel, assigns client-notification responsibilities, and explains how managers will prioritize deadline-sensitive engagements.
The disaster recovery plan supports those actions by confirming that cloud systems remain available, remote access works securely, and employees can reach tax software and client files.
Now consider a firm with a physical server in Tempe. An air-conditioning unit leaks directly above the server and damages it.
The continuity plan determines how the firm will continue working without the office server. The disaster recovery plan determines how the IT provider will bring the server environment back online. If the firm has the right technology, the provider may launch a recent image of that server in a secure cloud environment within hours. Employees can resume work while the provider repairs or replaces the physical equipment.
A smaller incident also requires recovery procedures. If an employee accidentally deletes several client folders, the disaster recovery plan should explain how the IT provider will locate, restore, and verify those files.
These scenarios show why firms should not treat a business continuity plan and disaster recovery plan as interchangeable documents.
Ownership of the Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan
Ownership matters because a plan without assigned responsibility often fails when the firm needs it most.
I do not recommend assigning every responsibility to one named individual. People change positions, take vacations, leave the firm, or become unavailable during the emergency itself. Assign responsibilities to job titles or operational roles first, then identify the primary and backup people who currently hold those roles. For example:
RESPONSBILITY
PRIMARY OWNER
SUPPORTING EXPERTS
Declare a continuity event
Managing partner or continuity leader
Executive committee
Coordinate firm operations
COO or firm administrator
Department leaders
Restore systems and data
IT provider or IT leader
Software and cloud vendors
Communicate with employees
HR or internal communications lead
Department managers
Notify clients
Client service or marketing leader
Engagement partners
Address legal oblications
Firm leadership
Legal counsel
Coordinate cyber insurance
Designated executive
Insurance broker and IR team
Document decisions and updates
Assigned incident coordinator
All response leaders
Choose people who can remain calm, organize information, communicate clearly, and make decisions under pressure. Involve the firm’s major stakeholders when developing the plan, then bring in subject-matter experts as needed.
Your MSP should help with technology and recovery procedures. Your insurance broker should clarify cyber insurance requirements. Legal counsel should address contractual and reporting obligations. Firm leadership must connect those pieces to operational priorities.
No single person should carry the entire plan.
How Cybersecurity Incident Response Fits Into Both Plans
A cybersecurity incident response plan explains how your firm will identify, contain, investigate, and respond to a suspected security event. It should define:
- – How employees report suspicious activity
- – Who determines whether an incident has occurred
- – Who can disconnect systems or disable accounts
- – When the firm contacts its MSP or cybersecurity team
- – When the firm contacts its cyber insurance carrier
- – How the firm preserves evidence
- – Who coordinates with legal counsel
- – Who evaluates notification or regulatory obligations
- – How the firm communicates with employees and clients
Incident response supports business continuity by helping the firm make safe operating decisions. For example, leaders may need to move employees to alternative systems, use a secondary communication channel, or temporarily suspend certain services.
It supports disaster recovery by guiding technical containment and restoration. The IT team must understand what caused the incident before restoring systems. Otherwise, the firm could restore infected data or reconnect a compromised account.
Think of incident response, continuity, and recovery as connected parts of one preparedness program. Incident response controls the cyber event. Business continuity keeps the firm functioning. Disaster recovery restores affected technology.
Cyber insurance also belongs in this program. Your plan should clearly state when to contact the carrier and which vendors the policy requires or authorizes you to use. Calling the wrong provider or starting work without notifying the insurer could complicate coverage.
Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan Comparison
AREA
BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN
DISASTER RECOVERY PLAN
Primary purpose
Keep the firm operating during a disruption
Restore systems, applications, and data
Scope
People, processes, facilities, communications, vendors, & technology
IT infrastructure, cloud services, devices, applications, & backups
Main question
how will we continue serving clients?
How will we restore technology safely?
Typical events
Office closure, regional outage, unavailable leader, pandemic, or major cyber incident
Server failure, ransomware, delted files, damaged equipment, or currupted data
CPA firm example
Employees work securely from home after the office closes
IT launches a virtual server and restores tax applications
Key measurements
Acceptable operational disruption and service priorities
Recovery time objective and recovery point objective
Primary owners
Firm leadership and operational stakeholders
MSP, IT leadership, and technology vendors
Communication role
Coordinates employees, clients, and vendors
Provides technical status and resotration updates
Testing method
Run a tabletop or simulated operational disruption
Restore data, applications, or a server in a controlled test
Desired result
The firm continues essential work
Technology returns to a secure, usable state
Test How the Plans Work Together
A plan sitting in a binder does not prove that your firm can recover. Testing does. Start by listing the people, systems, vendors, and locations your firm depends on. Then ask a series of “what if” questions:
- – What if Microsoft 365 becomes unavailable?
- – What if our tax software provider experiences a cyberattack?
- – What if our office loses internet access?
- – What if our firewall fails?
- – What if our physical server stops working?
- – What if our managing partner and firm administrator both become unavailable?
- – What if our primary backup cannot restore the data?
- – What if employees cannot use the firm’s normal communication platform?
Keep asking what happens next. I call this approach the “five ifs.” Go two or three levels beyond the first answer until you expose single points of failure.
Then run realistic exercises. Shut off access to a selected test resource and follow the playbook. Conduct controlled restoration tests at least quarterly to verify backup integrity and compare the restored information with the original data. Review the larger continuity strategy regularly and whenever the firm changes locations, vendors, systems, leadership roles, or workflows.
Your IT provider should proactively show you restoration test results, backup status, recovery capabilities, and unresolved risks. Ask broad questions and listen for specific answers. “We have backups” or “our response time is good” does not provide enough information.
Ask what recovery will look like, how long it will take, which system will come online first, and what the firm will do while that work occurs.
Turn Downtime Risk Into a Business Decision
A complete business continuity plan and disaster recovery plan helps your CPA firm protect client commitments, revenue, data, and trust. It also gives your team clear direction when pressure runs high and time matters.
The right recovery investment depends on the financial impact of an outage. A two-hour recovery target requires different technology and support than a two-day target. So, start with the most important question: How much downtime can your firm financially tolerate?
Use the Ma’atIT Downtime Calculator to estimate the financial effect of an outage. Then contact us to discuss what the result means for your continuity, disaster recovery, backups, cybersecurity, and IT support strategy. We help CPA firms in Arizona and across the United States build practical plans that work when the unexpected happens.
Fady Salama, President
Fady Salama is the Founder and CEO of Ma’atIT, where he helps businesses align technology with profitability and growth. With a strategic, numbers-driven approach, Fady works as a fractional CIO for his clients, going beyond IT support to build smarter roadmaps, reduce waste, and drive measurable business results.