What’s the difference between an Incident Management Procedure and a Disaster Recovery Plan?

What’s the difference between an Incident Management Procedure and a Disaster Recovery Plan?

Understanding the Difference

An Incident Management Procedure and a Disaster Recovery Plan are both critical components of a business continuity strategy, but they serve different functions and are applied at different stages of a disruption.

What Is an Incident Management Procedure?

An Incident Management Procedure focuses on managing and resolving incidents in real time. These incidents can include system outages, data breaches, or application errors that disrupt normal business operations. The goal is to detect the issue quickly, assess its impact, and take immediate action to minimize downtime and restore normalcy. This process emphasizes speed, communication, and efficiency during active incidents.

What Is a Disaster Recovery Plan?

A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP), on the other hand, is designed for large-scale failures or catastrophic events that cause significant damage to infrastructure or data. These events may include cyberattacks, natural disasters, or prolonged power failures. The DRP outlines how to recover lost data, rebuild systems, and resume critical functions over a longer timeframe after the immediate crisis has passed.

Key Differences Between the Two

While both are part of incident and risk management, their focus differs:

• The Incident Management Procedure is short-term and reactive, dealing with live events and their immediate resolution.

• The Disaster Recovery Plan is long-term and strategic, focusing on restoring systems and data post-incident.

Why Organizations Need Both

Together, these procedures ensure complete resilience. The Incident Management Procedure stabilizes the situation quickly, while the Disaster Recovery Plan ensures full recovery and long-term continuity. Relying on just one leaves gaps that can delay restoration or increase risk exposure.