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A robust disaster recovery and incident response is the essence of business operations in the dawn of increasing cyber security attacks such as data breaches, malware, ransomware attacks that cost businesses loss in millions, brand impact and staggered growth for future growth prospects.
Both disaster recovery and incident response plans are meant to reduce the impact of a cyber-attack, they look similar but with a very minor differentiating factor and people often confuse between the two.
In today’s article we will understand the difference between Incident response and disaster recovery, how both are different from each other and their importance for business.
What is Incident Response
Incident response plan’s sole purpose is to prevent an incident from occurring and fix it before it impacts entirely in a negative way instead of containing the impact of a cyber security attack once it had already breached the organization network. The incident response plan implements a set of defenses to ensure organization cyber security protection mechanisms are robust and full proof to prevent any unwanted incidents.
This is a preventive approach to keep business and data secure. Incident response has three phases:
- Pre-incident – preventive measures act as the first line of defence and internal systems and security controls are verified to identify a weakness in systems and close them.
- Mid-incident – if systems have a cyber-attack, then the incident response plan comes into effect – systems will be quarantined, isolated to clean up or negate the effect of threat.
- Post-Incident – phase attack is analysed deeply to understand better what went wrong and how to fix it permanently to avoid any similar future attacks.
What is Disaster Recovery Plan
Disaster recovery plans are usually defined to ensure businesses keep running in the event of any unforeseen events in which a cyber attack could be one. But at a broader level, disaster recovery plan focus is on recovery of data, systems, applications or documents post a number of events which can hamper normal business operations such as natural disasters, man-made disasters, cyber security incidents, 3rd party service providers availability etc.
The objective of the disaster recovery plan is to minimize downtime and ensure quick recovery of normal business operations and restore systems to their earlier state.
Comparison: Incident Response vs Disaster Recovery
| Features | Incident Response | Disaster Recovery |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Meant for specific purpose such as handling data breaches, phishing attacks, ransomware attacks, malware etc. | Meant to handle disruptions such as natural disasters such as flood, fire etc., man made disasters such as accidental or intentional deletion, hardware and software failures etc. |
| Objective | Recover, eradicate and handle cyber security incidents | Restoring systems and applications to their previous state post a disruption caused by different threat actors |
| Scope | Incident response, containment, recovery and eradication | Restoring IT infrastructure and systems , including recovery and data backups |
| Timing | Immediate response required incident response plan is triggered as soon as incident occurs | It is long term in nature; and covers wide range of threat actors, it is tested at periodic frequencies to ensure it works when actual disaster strikes |
| Link | Incident response plan could be subset of a disaster recovery plan meant to handle disruptions caused by cybersecurity incidents | Disaster recovery plan is subset of business continuity strategy and plan to ensure recovering of systems with minimal disruption to business |
Download the comparison table: incident response vs disaster recovery
Do we need both?
Question arises however; do we need both? The answer is ‘yes’ we need both, as both are meant for a different purpose. The purpose of the incident response plan is to have a focused approach on recovery from a cyber security incident and reduce the impact of breach substantially for business. Disaster recovery focus is continuity of business operations in the event of disaster or calamity which could be caused by multiple factors not necessarily by a cyber security incident only.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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