Business continuity planning used to be considered an internal IT concern. But in today’s environment—shaped by cyber threats, operational complexity, and tightening regulations—continuity is now a compliance requirement. If your organization operates in a regulated industry like healthcare, finance, or legal, regulators expect more than backups. They expect documented plans, tested procedures, and evidence that your systems can recover quickly in the event of disruption.

Regulatory compliance frameworks—from HIPAA and GLBA to client-driven SLA audits—require businesses to demonstrate how they’ll maintain secure access to critical systems and data during outages, cyberattacks, or infrastructure failures. That demand is pushing organizations to rethink how they approach disaster recovery and operational risk.

By aligning your business continuity planning with compliance mandates, you reduce exposure, improve resilience, and gain the confidence to navigate audits and crises alike. Solutions like Recovery+ can help bridge the gap—delivering not only the tools to recover, but also the documentation to prove you can.

Continuity Is a Compliance Expectation—Not a Recommendation

Compliance regulators no longer view business continuity as optional. In the healthcare space, for example, the HIPAA Security Rule mandates that covered entities implement a contingency plan that includes backup procedures, disaster recovery strategies, and emergency access protocols for electronic protected health information (ePHI).

As noted in the HIPAA Journal’s coverage, failure to plan for system outages or data recovery events constitutes a direct violation of the law. Simply having backups isn’t enough—you must demonstrate how they work, how fast you can recover, and who is responsible during an emergency.

The same is true in finance. Institutions governed by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA) are required to maintain safeguards that include recovery capabilities. And in legal services, business continuity expectations are increasingly written into contracts, especially when handling sensitive or confidential client information.

In each of these cases, regulators and clients aren’t just asking, “Do you have a backup?” They’re asking, “Can you recover the right data, fast enough, with proof?”

What a Compliance-Ready Continuity Plan Looks Like

To meet compliance expectations, a continuity plan must go beyond IT best practices. It must be documented, tested, and aligned with risk. A compliance-ready plan includes:

  • Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) – Maximum acceptable downtime for each system or service.
  • Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) – Maximum data loss tolerance, often in hours or minutes.
  • Data Backup Policies – Frequency, retention, encryption standards, and offsite replication.
  • System Restoration Procedures – Step-by-step instructions for restoring servers, applications, and cloud services.
  • Roles and Responsibilities – Who initiates the plan, who communicates status updates, and who manages technical tasks.
  • Testing & Maintenance Schedule – Evidence of plan testing and version control for updates.

If your continuity documentation can’t answer these questions quickly—or worse, doesn’t exist—you may not be in compliance.

The Operational Risks of Poor Planning

Without a compliance-aligned plan, disruptions often last longer, cause more damage, and invite legal scrutiny. Even brief outages can have cascading effects—lost data, missed transactions, and customer dissatisfaction. But beyond the immediate consequences, the long-term risk is legal and reputational damage.

Consider these common gaps that surface during audits or incidents:

  • No documented recovery workflows for mission-critical systems
  • Backups that are stored locally, without offsite or cloud redundancy
  • Disaster recovery plans that haven’t been tested in over a year
  • Lack of version control or audit trail for continuity documentation
  • No role clarity—staff unsure who does what in an emergency

These aren’t just operational oversights. In regulated industries, they’re compliance failures—and they can lead to fines, lawsuits, or client attrition.

Why Backup Alone Isn’t Enough

There’s a big difference between backing up data and being able to recover it in a compliant way. A full backup that takes 24 hours to restore may not meet your defined RTO. A local backup that gets encrypted by ransomware is worthless. And a backup that can’t be validated or documented might as well not exist during an audit.

That’s why organizations are turning to full-service solutions like Recovery+, which pairs high-performance disaster recovery infrastructure with compliance-grade reporting and support.

How Recovery+ Helps Meet Compliance Standards

At Cost+, our Recovery+ platform was built to meet both the technical and regulatory demands of modern business continuity. It’s more than a backup service—it’s a managed recovery framework with built-in documentation, encryption, and audit readiness.

Key features include:

  • Encrypted backups stored in redundant, geographically separated environments
  • Defined and tracked RTO/RPO metrics for each system
  • Automated testing of backup integrity and system recovery
  • Role-based access controls and event logging for audit transparency
  • Reporting templates that support HIPAA, GLBA, and client security reviews

Whether you’re preparing for a formal audit, a due diligence request, or internal risk assessment, Recovery+ gives you the tools—and the proof—to show you’re prepared.

Industries Where Continuity and Compliance Collide

Some industries are more exposed than others when it comes to continuity risk. If your business operates in any of these sectors, a compliance-aligned recovery plan should be non-negotiable:

  • Healthcare – HIPAA, HITECH, and patient care continuity requirements
  • Finance – GLBA, PCI-DSS, SOX, and consumer data integrity
  • Legal – Contractual obligations and client confidentiality expectations
  • Insurance – Policyholder data protection and regulatory disclosure rules
  • Education – FERPA, grant compliance, and sensitive student data

Each of these industries faces increased risk—not just from data loss, but from failed expectations around service availability and compliance deliverables.

Making the Case for Audit-Ready Recovery

In many organizations, continuity planning is still viewed as a low-priority IT function. That mindset needs to change. Recovery should be treated as a strategic capability—one that reduces downtime, meets client expectations, and satisfies regulatory audits without scrambling.

If your business continuity plan can’t be tested, can’t be documented, and can’t deliver fast, secure restoration, it’s not just a technical risk—it’s a compliance liability. With Recovery+, businesses can move from guesswork to confidence, knowing their continuity strategy holds up both in practice and under audit.

Final Thought: Compliance Without Recovery Is Incomplete

Protecting your business from operational risk means having the ability to recover—fully, quickly, and with traceability. Compliance frameworks have recognized this, and now your business continuity plan must rise to meet the same standard.

With Recovery+, you’re not just checking a box. You’re building a recovery process that’s measurable, testable, and aligned with the laws that govern your industry. It’s how modern businesses protect their data, their people, and their reputation—before something goes wrong.

By Thomas McDonald
Vice President