Disaster Recovery vs Cyber Resilience They Are The Same, Right?

As a CISO, few things are worse than realizing your network is down and it’s not just a glitch. It’s under the control of someone else. A malicious actor slipped past your defenses and compromised the assets you’re responsible for protecting.

 The emotional hit is real. All that strategy, effort, and preparation and still, you’re breached.

Relying on traditional disaster recovery (DR) or continuity of operations (COOP) plans isn’t enough. They’re often too broad and reactive. What’s needed is a cyber resilience strategy a proactive, integrated approach that prepares the entire business for inevitable cyber incidents.

 So, what’s the difference between DR, COOP, and Cyber Resilience?

Disaster Recovery is about restoring IT systems, data, and operations after major disruptions natural disasters or cyber-attacks. The focus is on minimizing downtime and data loss to protect the organization’s functionality, reputation, and bottom line.

 Continuity of Operations (COOP) is broader. It ensures critical business functions continue even during partial disruptions. It requires identifying vital processes and planning contingencies to maintain operations when things go sideways.

 Cyber Resilience, on the other hand, assumes breaches will happen. It focuses on response and recovery not just prevention. It’s not a tool or product it’s a mindset and methodology. It’s about minimizing damage, restoring operations quickly, and learning/adapting for the future.

The Four Pillars of Cyber Resilience

1. Anticipate – Identify vulnerabilities and risks. Stay prepared for what’s coming.

2. Withstand – Ensure critical functions continue during a breach.

3. Recover – Restore essential services without reintroducing threats.

4. Adapt – Evolve your strategies as threats and environments change.

Building a Cyber Resilience Plan

• Develop a Resilience Strategy that includes leadership, IT, and security input. It must cover both tech and business operations.

• Assess Risks Identify and evaluate risks to critical systems and processes.

• Ensure Business Continuity Stay online by using backups, redundancies, and failovers.

• Integrate Governance and Compliance Assign clear roles, communication plans, and decision protocols.

• Form Cross-Functional Teams A Cyber Resilience Steering Committee should guide priorities and align with business goals.

 Cyber resilience is about facing reality, breaches are going to happen. But with the proper preparation, structure, and mindset, your organization can absorb the hit, keep operating, recover faster, and come out stronger on the other side.

1. How do I actually measure cyber resilience? Try tracking

• Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Respond (MTTR): The shorter, the better.

• Recovery Time Objective (RTO): How fast you plan to bounce back.

• Recovery Point Objective (RPO): How much data you’re willing to lose?

• Business Continuity Readiness Score: Yes, this can be self-assessed via audits, tabletop exercises.

2. What does a Cyber Resilience Steering Committee actually do, and who should be on it?

This committee

• Sets priorities for resilience initiatives.

• Ensures alignment between IT, security, and business objectives.

• Coordinates risk assessments, policy development, and incident response planning.

• Oversees post-incident reviews and continuous improvement.

Who should be on it?

• CISO or security lead (a.k.a. you, sad reader)

• CIO or IT Director

• Business Continuity/Operations Manager

• Legal/Compliance Officer (someone has to say "no")

• Representative from key business units

• Comms/PR (optional but useful when explaining how your data leaked again)

Basically, people who will be screaming the loudest when things go sideways.

3. How do I fund or justify investment in a cyber resilience strategy to leadership? Speak their language: money and lawsuits.

• Show the cost of downtime (per hour/day). Spoiler: it’s horrifying.

• Reference breach case studies—bonus points for examples in your industry.

• Emphasize regulatory risk. CEOs love fines.

• Pitch resilience as competitive advantage “We can keep operating while our competitors melt down.”

• Align to business goals: “This isn’t just security, it’s continuity, reputation, and customer trust.”

And if all else fails, remind them that ransomware actors don’t take “budget constraints” as an excuse.

4. How is cyber resilience different for small or resource-limited organizations?

For small orgs, prioritize

• Backups: Regular, encrypted, offline.

• Patch management: The easiest thing, however you need to have plan.

• Basic incident response plan: A checklist, a call tree.

• User training: This needs to be an ongoing plan.

• MFA everywhere: Mandatory for everyone.

5. What are common mistakes organizations make when trying to implement cyber resilience?

• Treating it like an IT-only issue Security is everyone's problem.

• Over-reliance on prevention  

• No real incident response plan

• Skipping practice

• Failure to update plans

Resilience isn’t a project. It’s a lifestyle. A tragic, exhausting lifestyle but hey, better than bankruptcy.