Date : 11 Oct 2025
Avoiding Mistakes in Cyber Recovery
When a cyber incident hits, the clock starts. Every misstep during recovery adds cost, risk, and downtime. Below are eight common mistakes we see—and practical ways to avoid them so you can restore operations safely and quickly.
8 Costly Recovery Mistakes
1) Failing to identify the root cause
- Risk: Reinfection and repeat outages.
- Example: Restoring a compromised backup without closing the original vulnerability.
2) Restoring from compromised backups
- Risk: Re-introducing malware or encrypted data.
- Example: Recovering from ransomware-infected backups that were never integrity-checked.
3) Incomplete or outdated backups
- Risk: Missing data/configs, extended outage.
- Example: Critical files or app configs aren’t in scope; recovery “works” but services don’t.
4) Rushing the process
- Risk: Skipped patches, residual malware, unstable systems.
- Example: Bringing systems online before containment and eradication are complete.
5) Poor communication & coordination
- Risk: Duplicated effort, conflicting priorities, slow decisions.
- Example: Security and IT restore teams work different plans without executive guidance.
6) Failure to isolate the incident
- Risk: Lateral movement during recovery.
- Example: Reconnecting infected servers to production before they’re verified clean.
7) No post-recovery validation
- Risk: Silent corruption, performance cliffs, user-visible breakage.
- Example: Skipping application, data integrity, and security control tests post-restore.
8) Ignoring legal & compliance requirements
- Risk: Regulatory penalties and reputational harm.
- Example: Missing notification timelines (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR) or incomplete documentation.
A Simple “Safe Recovery” Checklist
- ✅ Test and update backups (integrity + restore tests, immutable copies).
- ✅ Follow a written incident response plan with roles and decision authority.
- ✅ Perform root-cause analysis before restore; eradicate and patch first.
- ✅ Isolate affected systems until they’re verified clean.
- ✅ Coordinate communications across IT, security, legal, execs, and vendors.
- ✅ Validate post-recovery (functional, data integrity, performance, security controls).
- ✅ Document everything for audit, lessons learned, and compliance reporting.
