River Run’s Peter Ferr brings decades of CIO experience to our clients whether he is leading their IT strategy as a fractional leader, constructing their IT Roadmap, getting them CMMC, NIST, FINRA, PCI or HIPAA compliance, or simply managing a complex project for them.
Peter and the CIO Services team at River Run also specialize in Incident Response Plans (IRP), Business Continuity Plans (BCP), and Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP).
We asked Peter if he could explain the difference between these plans and he gladly responded with the following:
At River Run, our mission is to help our people, our clients and our community achieve meaningful results. One way we honor this mission is by sharing information to help you prepare for any event that may impact your business. Being prepared means having plans in place to respond, remediate and return to normal business operation. The following are definitions of three plans every business should have in place: an Incident Response Plan, a Business Continuity Plan, and a Disaster Recovery Plan.
What is an Incident Response Plan?
An Incident Response Plan (IRP) is a set of documented procedures to respond to the repercussions of a security incident. The IRP provides the approach the business takes to manage a security incident’s lifecycle. The goal of an incident response plan and strategy is to allow an organization to detect, manage and recover from an attack, thereby minimizing damages to business assets quickly and effectively.
What is a Business Continuity Plan?
A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) provides a documented strategy and process to deal with known and unknown emergencies so that businesses can continue to work with as little interruption as possible. An effective BCP strategy ensures that the organization can facilitate its business operations even in the face of undesired events. The company BCP strategies provide operational continuity during and before the execution of the Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP).
What is a Disaster Recovery Plan?
A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is a documented, organized approach to quickly identify and direct IT resources into restoring data and regaining access to IT infrastructure after a cybersecurity incident or natural disaster. A Disaster Recovery Plan provides the support for, and integrates with, a Business Continuity plan.
What is the difference between these plans?
An Incident Response Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan are referenced within the Business Continuity Plan strategies. Their principles are considerably similar, and they both aim to minimize the risks and damages that a data security incident or a natural disaster may cause. However, there are some critical differences between them.
Here is an example to illustrate the differences: If there was a security or operational emergency within your business, an incident response plan will dictate how your security operations experts and employees respond to that incident. Often, an incident may or may not lead to the interruption or complete stoppage of operations. In such cases, security awareness training is critical because employees are often the first line of defense.
However, if business operations are directly impacted, then a business continuity plan will be triggered to get functions back to an acceptable level with the resources that are readily present. An incident response allows your organization to handle an incident from the start. Business continuity keeps your organization running during the lifecycle of an incident, while a disaster recovery plan provides the recovery process back to normal business operations.
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