Enterprises rely heavily on technology to run their business. Whether in the cloud or on-premises, technology operations involve running important business services and storing massive amounts of customer data. However, with the increasing prevalence of cyber threats, such as ransomware, businesses must recognize the vital distinctions between their IT disaster recovery vs cyber recovery strategies. In this e-guide, we will highlight the key similarities and differences between cyber recovery and disaster recovery.

The similarities between IT disaster recovery and cyber recovery

Before going into cyber recovery vs disaster recovery, it’s worth noting that there are several similar requirements for both scenarios. Both types of recovery require:

• The prioritization of critical and important business services
• An understanding of the teams that need to be involved
• Dependencies between tasks throughout the enterprise organization
• The orchestration and sequencing of tasks across technology and people
• Regularly exercising and testing disaster recovery runbooks
• Detailed audit logging for regulatory and compliance reporting
• Integrations into the recovery technology stack to minimize downtime and human toil

Traditional IT disaster recovery is to fail over to another location

Traditional IT DR generally assumes that an entire location (cloud or data center), or service application has an outage and requires failover and to be recovered. IT DR events can vary in scope, from power outages, to network failures, to human errors that cause data corruption. In each case, the outcome is generally the same: a failover to the predefined disaster recovery location. 

While any outage is impactful, organizations can have strategies and disaster recovery plans in place for these kinds of events by building executable disaster recovery runbooks. These runbooks enable IT staff to execute the failover and recovery within predefined times and with minimal or no data loss. Traditional IT DR events assume a safe and ready environment that can be planned and tested to ensure the success of an actual recovery incident.

Cyber recovery is more complex and unpredictable

There is generally more complexity in cyber recovery vs disaster recovery. Cyber attacks are at a level of complexity and unpredictability above traditional IT disasters that cause technology outages. For example, in the case of a ransomware attack, you do not know that

your failover location has not been affected. You also cannot easily know the degree of the blast radius affecting other systems as these types of attacks are unpredictable. If you get it wrong you exacerbate the problem. This is why cyber recovery involves a multi-level, complex set of processes and tasks beyond traditional IT DR. 

There are notable differences to how you need to recover from a cyber attack as opposed to traditional IT DR. For example, when a cyber attack occurs, the initial response tasks performed are primarily done by the security operation center (SOC) team to quickly investigate and detect the type of attack and its blast radius to determine which systems were affected by it. Whereas, in traditional IT DR scenarios, the response to the outage is generally a well known process and is performed by central IT.

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Furthermore, because cyber attacks are so detrimental to the business, any applications or services suspected of being infected with malware must be contained by taking them off the network to prevent further damage to the business. While in the case of IT DR, you know exactly what is down so there is no need to contain or isolate any periphery applications or services. 

The cyber recovery process begins by restoring any breached authentication services and the last known good backup of data and application source code. While in an IT DR process, authentication services would not be infected and the latest backup or synchronized data is used as there is no concern about malware. In addition, a cyber recovery’s restoration of applications and data is most likely to be on a set of clean bare metal servers. In the event of a cyber attack, recovering applications and data to your secondary or prebuilt site is not wise as those too might be infected with some type of malware that is lying dormant and ready to be activated. Even high availability and cloud architectures, such as containers and microservices, increase complexity as they can rapidly spread the malware infection. In this case, you will need a clean bare metal environment to rebuild your affected applications and data. 

It is also very difficult to test your ability to recover from a cyber attack. Unlike traditional cloud or data center disaster recoveries, which are generally well rehearsed and exercised, cyber attacks are so unpredictable that it is extremely hard to foresee how different attack vectors and those recovery strategies need to be tested. In addition, cyber recovery testing could involve taking down production applications and services or authentication services, which might be deemed too risky to the business.

Cyber recovery is not just about restoring data and systems. It is also important to learn from the attack and take steps to improve the organization’s security posture and its ability to recover quickly. This may involve more rigor on cyber recovery testing and process improvement, patching vulnerabilities, implementing new security controls, and educating employees about cyber security best practices.

Cyber recovery vs disaster recovery

The chart below highlights some of the key components of cyber recovery vs disaster recovery.

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How Cutover can help you recover from a cyber attack

The best way to protect your organization from any cyber attack is to implement a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy. However, it’s equally important to use standardized and automated runbooks to increase efficiency and reduce risk exposure for when you need to recover from an attack. Cutover’s automated runbooks are designed to assist you in managing and orchestrating complex tasks and workstreams, including recoveries from technology disasters and cyber attacks. Cutover plays a crucial role in facilitating and streamlining the recovery process after a cyber attack. Here’s how Cutover can help you recover from a cyber attack: 

Dynamic, automated runbooks and orchestration

Cutover’s dynamic, automated runbooks and built-in logic give you the ability to orchestrate the sequence of tasks and their dependencies to complete an operation that saves staff from manual, repetitive tasks and potentially making mistakes following an attack. More importantly, Cutover’s cyber recovery solution enables you to dynamically update a runbook in real time as circumstances change and new information comes to light for a faster recovery. 

Collaboration and communication

When recovering from a cyber attack, effective communication and collaboration among various teams such as your SOC and the IT operations teams are crucial. Cutover provides real-time communication channels and integrations to Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Slack that enable different stakeholders, such as IT teams, cybersecurity experts, legal, marketing, executives, and external partners, to stay informed and work together seamlessly.

Task tracking and status updates

Cutover provides real-time dashboards so stakeholders can have instant visibility into recovery progress. You can monitor the completion of critical recovery tasks, identify bottlenecks, and address any issues promptly. This transparency ensures that everyone involved is aware of the current status of the recovery effort.

Integrations

Cutover’s integration and automation capabilities streamline repetitive tasks during the recovery process. For example, you can automate the provisioning process for a bare metal recovery or launch a task to restore data from a data vault and other recovery actions, saving time and reducing the risk of human errors. These integrations enhance the platform’s capabilities and allow for a more comprehensive recovery approach.

Testing and validation

Prior to any cyber attack, organizations should regularly exercise and validate their recovery plans. Cutover enables you to conduct realistic exercises and rehearsals of the recovery process, helping your team become more proficient in executing the necessary steps and making improvements as needed.

Documentation and audit trails

Regulators require proof from enterprises and their third party providers that they are able to recover from a cyber attack. Cutover maintains detailed audit trails of the entire recovery process, down to the time spent on individual tasks. Cutover’s auto-generated audit logs reduce compliance reporting time by up to 60% and help organizations avoid potential regulatory ramifications.

Scalability and flexibility

Cutover is designed to handle complex and large-scale recovery scenarios. Whether you’re recovering a single system or an entire network, Cutover can scale to meet your organization’s needs.

It’s important to note that while Cutover provides dynamic automated runbooks for managing the recovery process, it is just one part of a comprehensive cyber recovery strategy. To effectively recover from a cyber attack, organizations should also implement robust

cybersecurity measures, maintain secure data backups, and conduct regular employee training to prevent future incidents.

Take a proven approach towards your cyber recovery. Contact Cutover today.

Learn how we helped the largest global financial institutions with their cyber and IT disaster recovery strategies.