A Practical Guide to Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Reviews
A Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Review answers one operational question with evidence, not assumption: if your core systems, your primary facility, or a critical vendor went down tomorrow, would your organisation actually keep running — and for how long could it survive before the damage became irreversible? At PNPC Global, we do not hand you a generic BCP template with your logo on the cover. We map your actual critical processes, test your actual backup and failover arrangements, and run your team through a realistic disruption scenario to see whether the plan on paper would genuinely work when invoked.
What This Actually Covers
A Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Review evaluates whether an organisation can keep its critical operations running through a disruption — a cyberattack, a data centre outage, a facility loss, a key-vendor failure, a regional event — and whether the technical Disaster Recovery (DR) arrangements that exist on paper would actually restore systems and data within the time and data-loss tolerances the business needs. The review has two connected halves. The business continuity half identifies which processes are genuinely mission-critical, quantifies the Recovery Time Objective (RTO — how quickly each process must be restored) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO — how much data loss is tolerable) for each, and maps single points of failure across people, vendors, facilities, and systems.
For the full scope, current process and what PNPC includes, see the dedicated Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Reviews service page.
Signs This Applies to You
- SEBI-regulated intermediary, stock exchange, depository, or Qualified Regulated Entity that must demonstrate a documented and periodically tested BCP-DR framework under the SEBI Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF)
- Bank, NBFC, or payment system operator whose Board or IT Strategy Committee needs evidence of a tested BCP-DR arrangement consistent with RBI's IT governance and risk expectations
- Listed company (top 1,000 by market capitalisation, among others) whose Risk Management Committee under SEBI LODR Regulation 21 must show that business continuity and cybersecurity risk are addressed within its formal risk management policy, not just referenced in passing
- Organisation that has a written BCP-DR document that has never actually been tested through a tabletop exercise, a simulated failover, or a real backup restoration
What This Doesn't Cover
- You need a combined operational-continuity and internal-fraud-risk review — that broader, dual-domain engagement is our Business Continuity & Fraud Risk Assessment, which pairs BCP with fraud triangle mapping and segregation-of-duties testing
- You need penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, or a full technical cybersecurity control review — that sits within our Cybersecurity Audit, which goes deeper on the technical security layer than a continuity-and-recovery review
- You need internal financial controls over financial reporting documented and tested (the controls the statutory auditor reports on under Section 143(3)(i) and, for listed companies, the directors' statement under Section 134(5)(e) covers) — that is an IFC Review engagement, narrower and specifically scoped to financial reporting controls
Quick Answers
What exactly is a Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Review, in plain terms?
It is a structured review that answers a practical question: if your core systems, your office, or a critical vendor became unavailable tomorrow, how long could your business keep operating, and would your backup and recovery arrangements actually restore things in time? We map which processes and systems are genuinely critical, check whether your backup and disaster recovery setup would actually work if you needed it, and run a simulated disruption exercise to see how your team responds in practice — not just what the written plan says on paper.
Is a Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Review legally required for my company?
It depends on your entity type. SEBI-regulated intermediaries, stock exchanges, depositories, and other Qualified Regulated Entities are required to maintain a documented and periodically tested BCP-DR framework with defined RTO/RPO targets under SEBI's Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF). Banks, NBFCs, and payment system operators face similar expectations under RBI's IT governance and risk framework, including periodic DR drills reported to the Board or IT Strategy Committee. Among listed companies, the top 1,000 by market capitalisation (and certain other listed entities) must have a Risk Management Committee under SEBI LODR Regulation 21, whose risk management policy is expected to include a business continuity plan. For unregulated private companies, there is no single statute naming this review; the directors' internal financial controls statement under Section 134(5)(e) applies to listed companies, so for a private company this is a matter of good governance, and knowing your financial systems can actually recover also supports the statutory auditor's internal financial controls reporting where that applies.
How is this different from PNPC's Business Continuity & Fraud Risk Assessment?
Both share the Business Impact Analysis and single-point-of-failure mapping methodology, because operational resilience is a common foundation. This BCP & DR Review goes deeper into the technical disaster recovery architecture — backup verification, replication testing, failover drills, DR site readiness — and is the right scope when fraud risk is not the immediate concern. The Business Continuity & Fraud Risk Assessment adds fraud triangle mapping and segregation-of-duties/access-rights testing on top of the continuity work, and is the right scope when the Board wants both operational resilience and fraud exposure assessed together. Many clients start with one and add the other in a later phase.
Getting This Right From the Start
Find out whether your business would actually keep running through a real disruption — before that question gets answered the hard way, during an actual outage. Speak with a PNPC engagement partner, a practising Chartered Accountant who will map your real dependencies, test your real backups and failover, and present findings your Board can act on immediately.
PNPC Global has advised Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad businesses since 1986. Explore the full Transformation & Tech practice for related services, or go straight to the Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Reviews page for specifics.
This is a general explainer, not a substitute for checking today's rules with PNPC or the relevant authority — figures and deadlines move, so none are quoted here as fixed.