The purpose of a business continuity plan or a disaster recovery plan is to prepare your business in the event of extended service outages caused by factors beyond your control (e.g., natural disasters, man-made events), and to restore services to the widest extent possible in a minimum timeframe. All of your company's sites are expected to implement preventive measures whenever possible to minimize operational disruptions and to recover as quickly as possible when an incident occurs.

This process is difficult enough for large businesses, but what about smaller organizations, that often have less staff and resources? Small business disaster recovery planning can be extremely challenging, especially from the perspectives of time, money and resources.

According to Deni O'Connor, principal analyst, Storage Strategies NOW, in the report Data Protection and Recovery in the Small and Midsized Business, "There are approximately 5.75 million SMB organizations in the United States alone, each with a unique set of challenges and requirements that must be met to protect the viability of companies. SMBs consistently struggle to protect growing volumes of information and with so many options, data protection and disaster recovery can be a daunting challenge to overcome."

To make the disaster recovery planning process easier, we've collected our top five resources on business continuity planning for SMBs, starting with a free, downloadable business continuity plan template. Explore our resources on small business disaster recovery planning.