Incident Response vs Disaster Recovery: What's the Difference?

When you're researching different strategies to protect and prepare your business for cyber attacks, you will see many terms thrown around. "Zero Trust", "Shadow IT", "penetration testing", and "Zero-Day Attacks" are all examples of new terms in the cybersecurity world in recent decades.

You may have heard of "incident response" and "disaster recovery" in reference to the action plans necessary after a cyber attack. However, these strategies are much different in nature. The biggest difference is that the incident response process is a more proactive approach, while disaster recovery is a reactive measure to cyber attacks.

Here is an overview of the similarities and differences between incident response plans vs disaster recovery plans.

What Is Disaster Recovery In Cyber Security?

Businesses often seek out disaster recovery services after they've fallen victim to a devastating attack. These services are useful, to be sure, as they often involve cybersecurity experts and forensic specialists to help your business bounce back.

Both incident response planning and disaster recovery aim to help your business mitigate damages caused by cyber breaches. However, it is worth noting that trying to do damage control amid the chaos following a breach is exponentially harder than utilizing a predetermined incident response plan.

When cyber disasters happen, tensions run high and panic can lead to poor decision-making. This is what hackers rely on. When you feel pressed for time, you are more likely to resort to paying huge sums to ransomware attackers or disaster recovery companies.

How Disaster Recovery Is Different From Regular Backup?

Disaster recovery centers around business continuity, which is essentially damage control to minimize the harm a cyber event has on your business. After a cyberattack, you may decide to hire a disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) company. When you do so, disaster recovery specialists will seek out and try to recover your data. The easiest way to do this is from any existing data backups.

However, many businesses are unaware of their data backups or have weak data backups that can get compromised by hackers. Cybercriminals are smart, and they will go after any backups they can get their hands on in order to back you into a corner.

The best rule in cybersecurity is preparedness. You should have strong data backups as a default measure, and disaster recovery services should be a last resort. As most experts will tell you, it's better to practice proactive cybersecurity than rely on IT disaster recovery solutions to help you clean up the mess.

What Is Incident Response Planning?

Incident response planning has similar goals to disaster recovery, but with a more proactive approach. This methodology involves setting up an action plan to organize how you will handle a cyber breach as an organization.

This planning involves the creation of policies and procedures to follow, so your leadership is well-versed on their roles and timelines for response. Most experts will advise you to conduct tabletop exercises as a means of cybersecurity incident response training for leadership.

These meetings should include all of the key decision-makers in your incident response plan, and you can see a full guide on who that should include in our blog: Key Players in Your Cyber Incident Response Plan

What Is A Security Incident Response Strategy?

When you plan for incident response, you should work with your business's leadership team to iron out details like:

• Implementing strong data backups and determining who is responsible for their maintenance
• Planning ransomware incident response steps
• Defining roles and responsibilities for cyber incident reporting, PR, client notification, etc
• Scheduling tabletop exercises and training for necessary parties
• Meeting with your cyber insurance representatives and getting to know available services

These are just a few of the steps in creating an incident response plan, which is an active and ongoing process to complete with your IT provider.

How to Assemble Your Incident Response Team

Among the many moving parts listed, your support team is the most important aspect of data breach response. When creating your plan, you must consider factors like:

• The size and leadership structure of your business
• How many clients, patients, vendors, and staff could be affected by a breach
• Your IT environment and existing protections in place
• State and nationwide requirements for security breach response
• Continuity plans to reduce harm to productivity, revenue, and business operations

Talk to your IT team, leadership, cyber insurance agents, legal support, and PR team. They can help you define the most important steps for your plan. They can also provide guidance on details concerning compliance, notification requirements, important timelines, and more.

To learn more about the importance of cyber insurance, watch our webinar here: Is Cyber Insurance A Critical Part of Your Cyber Attack Survival Kit?

Are Incident Response Plans Legally Required?

As cyberattacks continue to harm businesses and individuals, more and more regulations are created to hold businesses accountable for their cybersecurity. Especially for businesses that deal with sensitive data such as healthcare or law, it is crucial to comply with the growing list of guidelines.

To learn more about how the law has stepped in to penalize businesses for poor cybersecurity leading to breaches, read our blog: Can My Business Get Sued for a Cybersecurity Breach?

The long list of cybersecurity requirements can seem daunting. However, many businesses opt to hire outsourced IT services to simplify and implement basic requirements to reduce the risk of data breaches. To see the industries where managed IT is especially worthwhile, check out our article: The 6 Best Industries for Managed IT Services

How Do It Services Help Businesses With Cybersecurity?

An IT provider will be a great resource for incident response planning as well as cybersecurity. To learn about the top expert-recommended cybersecurity tools you can implement today, read our blog: Ask the Expert: 7 Cybersecurity Essentials To Check Off

If you're ready to revamp your organization's cybersecurity and take a proactive approach with your incident response plan, click the button below to connect to an IT expert.