The previous chapter looked at how an attack can be investigated to understand the cause and prevent a similar attack in the future. However, an organization cannot fully depend on protecting itself from attacks and all the risks that it faces. The organization is exposed to a wide range of disasters such that it is impossible to have protective measures against them. The causes of a disaster to the IT infrastructure can either be natural or man-made. Natural disasters are ones that result from environmental hazards or acts of nature. These include blizzards, wildfires, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, floods, lightning strikes, and even asteroids falling from the sky and impacting the ground. Man-made disasters are ones that arise from the actions of human users or external human actors. They include fires, cyber warfare, nuclear explosions, hacking, power surges, and accidents, among others.

When these strike an organization, its level of preparedness to respond to a disaster will determine its survivability and speed of recovery. This chapter will look at the ways an organization can prepare for a disaster, survive it when it happens, and easily recover from the impact.

We will talk about the following topics:

• Disaster recovery plan
• Live recovery
• Contingency plan
• Best practices for recovery