Incident Response vs. Disaster Recovery: What Is the Difference?

Incident response and disaster recovery planning are similar ideas, but they speak to preparing for different types of incidents. Consider what might happen if your company experienced a data breach; what steps your leadership and team might take to contain and eliminate the risk. This process is an example of incident response. Your company would take different steps to manage a security incident than it would if you experienced a natural disaster like a hurricane or flood. Disaster planning describes planning for both of these types of emergencies, while incident response refers specifically to credible cyber threats. 

Incident response planning is part of disaster recovery planning, but it speaks to the steps your organization will take in response to a cybersecurity incident that threatens operations. Explore the difference between the two responses and some strategies involved in both types of planning. 

Is incident response the same as disaster recovery?

Disaster recovery planning is the process of thinking ahead about what your company or organization should do in the event of a disaster that makes it difficult for the business to operate. Incident response is a type of disaster recovery planning that refers to the steps your organization would take in the event of a cybersecurity incident. This can include cybersecurity attacks like ransomware or a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). Disaster recovery planning covers a broader range of scenarios, such as a severe weather event or an extended power outage. 

While you are in disaster recovery planning, you can create an incident response plan that lays out how your organization will prepare in advance for a security incident and what actions your team will take when an incident is active or immediately after. However, disaster recovery planning is a broader concept than solely cybersecurity and includes other types of plans, such as a business continuity plan. This is a document that explains the steps your company will take to stay in business in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. 

What is incident response?

Incident response is the set of actions your team will take following a cybersecurity incident. Security threats, such as phishing attempts, attacks on your supply chain, or ransomware, require action both to prevent them from happening and to contain the threat, minimize the risk, and assess the resulting data accurately. 

Why is incident response important?

Incident response is important because cyber threats are widespread and pose a significant risk to businesses. In its 2024 “Cost of a Data Breach Report,” IBM found that the average global cost of a data breach in 2024 was $4.88 million—a 10 percent increase from 2023 [1]. Further, it’s notable that in 2023, 1.9 million unique cyber threats were detected [2], and those threats continue increasing year after year. The high level of potential risk and the frequency with which individuals and organizations face attacks make incident response a critical component of disaster recovery planning. 

What are the five incident response steps?

While every threat is unique, your incident response strategy should have five main steps: planning and preparing, detecting and analyzing, containing the threat, eradicating the threat and recovering from the aftermath of the incident, and reviewing the event in hindsight to analyze what went well, what can improve, and how you can make your data more secure in the future. 

Incident response strategy

While every threat is unique, the process you outline in your incident response strategy will follow a similar format for any cyber threat your organization faces. These five steps include: 

• Plan and prepare before a cyber threat occurs: Preparing for a security threat could include running simulated security events to practice how your team will respond in a real situation and staying up to date on the latest threats and trends in cybersecurity. 

• Detect and analyze the incident: This stage of an incident response plan outlines how the company will monitor and spot cyber threats when they occur, as well as factors like how your team will communicate this information and assemble for the next phase. 

• Contain the threat to minimize risk: After you’ve detected your threat and determined the nature of the security risk, you can isolate the areas of your system or network related to the risk to prevent it from spreading throughout a broader range of data. 

• Eradicate the threat and recover from the incident’s aftermath: After securing the threat as best as you can, you can take steps to eradicate it. Your incident response plan may outline different actions you could take for various kinds of threats. 

• Reviewing the event: After you’ve recovered from a security incident, you can follow an organized process for assessing how well your team responded and what steps you could take in the future to create an even more secure system. 

What is disaster recovery?

Cybersecurity incidents are one example of a disaster your company could experience that could grind business to a halt. However, a disaster recovery plan also considers a number of other types of disasters to determine your organization's response. This may include natural disasters like a flood or a hurricane, or situations like losing power for an extended period of time. Creating a disaster recovery plan could help ensure improved continuity and faster recovery should your company go through a disaster. 

Why is disaster recovery important?

Disaster recovery plans are important because they help minimize the risk of the unknown. Natural disasters, cyber threats, and other disasters are unpredictable, out of your control, and will have a major impact on your business. Although you can’t always prevent a disaster from happening, a disaster recovery plan helps your organization lower the cost and downtime associated with a disaster. 

Disaster recovery strategy

Disaster recovery planning requires you to consider different factors and plan to overcome a disaster in four stages. The stages of disaster recovery are: 

• Prepare: This involves steps you take to prepare in advance for a disaster and to prevent disasters from happening. 

• Detect: This stage covers steps that happen immediately after you detect a disaster. The actions outlined here will depend in part on the type of disaster your company is facing. The steps to detecting a cyberattack, for example, will be different from the steps you take in the event of a tornado. 

• Correct: This involves steps you’ll take to correct the damage, such as relying on backup systems or moving operations to a disaster recovery site. 

• Mitigate: Your disaster recovery strategy should also include a plan for how your company will learn from the disaster by reviewing what happened and planning for how to prevent similar damage in the future. 

Disaster recovery plans also help you plan and discuss factors like where and how your company will return to business after an emergency. These factors include: 

• Recovery time objective: This is a goal your company sets ahead of time to determine how long after an emergency the company will return to an operational state. Your disaster recovery plan will likely also establish your RTO. 

• Recovery point objective: The recovery point measures how much data your company can lose and still return to business and recover from the event. Your disaster recovery plan can outline this point, which can help provide perspective on how bad attacks are and how capable your organization is of overcoming them. 

Incident response vs. disaster recovery

Incident response planning and disaster recovery planning both help your company get back to business faster after a disaster or emergency. Incident response refers specifically to cyber threats, while disaster recovery refers to many different types of disasters, including natural disasters, service outages, and other threats that can impact your business. You will need an incident response plan as part of your disaster recovery strategy. 

Learn more about protecting against cyberattacks on Coursera

Incident response is an important part of disaster planning, and it’s wise to have a plan in place for how your organization will respond in the event of a disaster. You can learn more about protecting against cyberattacks on Coursera. For example, consider the Google Cybersecurity Professional Certificate to learn to protect networks, devices, people, and data from unauthorized access and cyberattacks using Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools. You can also consider the IBM Cybersecurity Analyst Professional Certificate to help you launch your career as a cybersecurity analyst.