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NIST 800-53 CP-2 NIST 800-53 IR-8 CompTIA Security+ 5.1 ISC2 CC 2.2 ISC2 CISSP 7.11 ISC2 CISSP 7.13 Cisco CCST Cybersecurity 4.4 CompTIA Network+ 3.3
InteractiveSecurityFree

Which Plan Takes Over?

Incident response, disaster recovery or business continuity? Sort each situation.

⚑ Complete this interactive to capture a CTF flag worth 5 points.

About this interactive

Sometimes an incident response plan is not enough and a disaster recovery plan has to take over. An incident response plan is for responding to an incident: someone reports a service down or something strange on the network, and the team works out what is going on and fixes it. Disaster recovery (DR) is recovering from something catastrophic: a total system meltdown where servers must be replaced, corrupt or missing data that needs a full restore, or a whole data center offline, so the business fails over to a hot, warm or cold site. Disaster recovery usually starts as incident response: the team troubleshoots, realizes it is a total meltdown, and pulls out the DR plan. What matters is less the cause (fire, earthquake, cyber crime, a utility disruption) than the effect on the systems. These two are about IT systems. A contingency plan and a business continuity plan are bigger in scope: they cover business operations, not only technology. A contingency plan handles a specific disruption, such as a pandemic sending everyone to work from home. A business continuity plan is broader still, covering how the business keeps doing what it is there to do, and contains contingency plans. Governments call it continuity of operations. A DR plan covers people (who declares the disaster, who communicates, who coordinates), process (the documented failover and restore steps) and technology (servers, facilities, alternate sites), with capacity planning, platform diversity and testing.

What you'll learn

Aligned to

NIST 800-53
CP-2 Contingency Plan
IR-8 Incident Response Plan
CompTIA Security+
5.1 Summarize elements of effective security governance.
ISC2 CC
2.2 Understand redundancy
ISC2 CISSP
7.11 Implement Disaster Recovery (DR) processes
7.13 Participate in Business Continuity (BC) planning and exercises
Cisco CCST Cybersecurity
4.4 Explain the importance of disaster recovery and business continuity planning
CompTIA Network+
3.3 Explain disaster recovery (DR) concepts.

Key terms

Incident Response Plan
IRP
An Incident Response Plan is a documented set of procedures that defines the roles, processes, and communication protocols an organization follows to detect, contain, eradicate, and recover from security incidents in a coordinated manner.
Disaster Recovery
DR
The process and procedures for recovering IT systems and data following a disruptive event.
Disaster Recovery Plan
DRP
A Disaster Recovery Plan is a documented set of procedures for restoring IT systems and data following a disruptive event, defining recovery time objectives, roles, and step-by-step recovery actions.
Business Continuity Plan
BCP
A documented strategy for maintaining essential business functions during and after a disaster or disruption.
Contingency Plan
A predefined set of procedures activated to address specific operational disruptions, often incorporated within a broader business continuity plan.
Continuity of Operation Planning
COOP
Continuity of Operation Planning is a government and enterprise process to ensure that essential functions continue during and after a major disruption, disaster, or emergency.
Failover
The automatic switching to a redundant system or component when the primary one fails.
Hot Site
A fully operational duplicate facility with live systems and current data that can immediately assume workloads if the primary site fails, providing the fastest possible disaster recovery time.

Topics

Disaster Recovery Incident Response Plan Business Continuity Plan Contingency Plan Interactive Categorize

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