Incident Response vs. Disaster Recovery vs. Business Continuity: What’s the Difference?
- Updated: 7/24/2025
One power outage.
One ransomware attack.
One failed backup.
That’s all it takes to bring operations to a halt.
And that’s why organizations need more than just a cybersecurity plan—they need a full playbook.
As you start looking at creating a playbook, it’s easy to get confused about the differences between incident response plans, disaster recovery plans, and business continuity plans. This post breaks down how the plans all weave together into a holistic strategy to protect your business.
What Is an Incident Response Plan?
The Incident Response plan is the overarching document that gives your team clear guidance on exactly what to do during incidents, data breaches, and other pressure-packed situations when it’s easy to get overwhelmed—it’s your first line of defense.
If you realize you may be facing a cybersecurity incident, the IR plan will help direct your actions. Every good cybersecurity program puts a high priority on writing and regularly reviewing an IR plan. In many cases, you may be required to have one by industry regulators, cyber insurance policies, and customer agreements—all wanting assurance that you can handle incidents.
Your IR plan should cover:
- Definition of an incident: Establish a clear checklist to help your team identify incidents that warrant activating the IR plan. This also includes defining the transition to disaster recovery or business continuity efforts.
- Team Structure and Responsibilities: Ensure your IR plan details the roles of each team member, including representatives from IT, HR, legal, PR, and executive leadership, to ensure coordinated efforts during an incident.
- Incident Reporting: Define procedures for timely communication of incidents to the appropriate stakeholders, ensuring that incidents are reported through the correct channels.
- Communication Guidelines: Outline how to communicate with external parties, including customers and the media, to manage the public perception of the incident.
- Post-Incident Review:Develop a structured process for debriefing, summarizing the incident, and implementing any necessary adjustments to improve future responses.
What Is a Disaster Recovery Plan
Note that many organizations combine the DR and BC plans into a single document that outlines the processes involved for declaring a disaster, the formulation of the Response Team Members, the processes necessary for a secure recovery, and finally the steps necessary to maintain the continuity of business operations. We’ll explain the differences in the documents here, but rather than fixating on rigid definitions, just make sure you have thorough plans in place.
Disaster recovery focuses on restoring IT systems and data after a major incident, such as a hardware failure, cyberattack, or natural disaster. The DR plan usually centers specifically on data and technology operations with processes for recovering information systems at an alternate facility in response to a major hardware or software failure or destruction of facilities. The DR plan explains, for example, how you can restore lost data, whether that means restoring a single system or an entire data center.
Key elements of a Disaster Recovery Plan:
- Data and System Recovery: Establish procedures for restoring data and systems, whether from backups or through alternate facilities.
- Recovery Objectives: Define Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) to clarify how long you can function without a service and how current the data must be when you restore it. For example, RPOs may tell you that restoring copies of training materials from 48 hours ago isn’t a problem. But if your business runs on current stock market trading data, the RPO will show that you need data to be current within a few minutes.
- Testing and Maintenance: Ensure regular testing of the DR plan to validate recovery processes and update the plan as needed to reflect evolving technologies and risks.
Business Continuity Plan Basics
The BC plan describes how you’ll maintain operations during and after a significant disruption or an incident. The BC plan should include a triage process for restoring the most essential operations first, such as filling customer orders, making payroll, supporting business partners, etc. While the DR plan addresses IT recovery, the BC plan focuses on maintaining critical functions across the organization, from customer service to supply chain management
Your BC plan will explain how you can maintain operations in situations such as:
- Encryption of your data by hackers
- Loss of power to your facility
- Failure of a supplier to deliver key materials
- Natural disasters
The BC plan rests on the foundations of an overall information technology risk assessment and a business impact analysis (BIA). The BIA specifically identifies potential operational implications of various scenarios. What happens to your business if, for example, you lose access to a certain database or cloud-based software? How long could you withstand such an outage without major damage to your business? In a BIA, you’ll seek to put an actual financial cost on various interruptions so that you can make informed investments in prevention and mitigation strategies described in your BC plan.
Incident Response, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans: 3 Essentials for Each
For all three of the plans described in this post, be sure to include these key elements:
- Designated Point of Contact (POC): Assign a leader for each plan to ensure accountability and clear direction during a crisis.
- Regular Updates: Commit to annual reviews and updates to keep your plans current with organizational changes and evolving risks, such as the increased reliance on cloud-based services and remote workforces.
- Testing: Conduct regular testing, such as tabletop exercises, to make sure your team is prepared and your plans are effective. Depending on your industry, more frequent or in-depth testing may be necessary
Need help assessing your risks or building your cybersecurity playbook? Talk to an HBS expert. We’ll help you close the gaps—and stay ready.
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