Traditional disaster recovery assumes infrastructure failure; cyber recovery assumes an adversary worked to destroy recovery options — encrypted backups, stolen admin credentials, poisoned snapshots, persistence in restore images. It therefore adds isolated or immutable copies, verified-clean restoration, rebuilt credentials, and the ability to operate while the environment is still contested.
Key points
Isolated recovery pathKeep recovery copies, credentials, and the restore environment separated from production identity and network so one compromise cannot reach both.
Pre-restore verificationRestoring infected or attacker-seeded images returns the adversary with the data; validate clean points and rebuild trust anchors rather than rolling back blindly.
Important limitationCyber recovery is slower and more expensive than ordinary restore. Clean-room rebuilds, credential resets, and forensic validation take time the RTO may not allow — which is why it must be exercised, not assumed.