What’s the difference between DR and IR, and why combine them?

DR traditionally handles availability events (AZ/region outages), while IR handles security breaches. In reality, a breach is a disaster: you need to contain, restore integrity, and resume service. Combining them means you define shared SLOs (revocation, rotation, minimal service), run joint drills, and encode guardrails that reduce both failure modes.

We’re regulated (HIPAA/GDPR). How do we keep speed?

Automate guardrails and evidence. Use data classification tags, Kyverno/OPA admissions, and CI checks that fail fast. Ephemeral envs with synthetic data keep dev velocity, while JIT access and immutable evidence keep auditors happy.

What tools do you recommend to start?

Start with OPA/Conftest for IaC, Kyverno or Gatekeeper for K8s admissions, Sigstore Cosign for signing/attestations, Trivy for scanning, AWS SCPs + Config + Security Hub for cloud controls, and GitHub Actions for wiring proofs into CI.

How often should we drill breach scenarios?

Quarterly is a good baseline, with at least one unannounced GameDay per year. Track metrics (revocation time, rotation time, minimal-service restore) and raise the bar until it’s boring.

What evidence do auditors actually accept?

Time-stamped, signed artifacts tied to commits/deploys, plus logs from Config/Security Hub. Screenshots rot. Signed attestations and immutable buckets plus control dashboards survive scrutiny.

Security-compliance · Oct 6, 2025 · 10 minute read

The DR Plan That Survived a Breach: Policy to Guardrails, Checks, and Proofs

If your disaster recovery plan ignores security incidents, it’s not a plan—it’s a wish. Here’s how to bake breach scenarios into DR, codify policy as guardrails, and ship fast without leaking PII.

Alex Kim

Principal Engineer, GitPlumbers

20 years building and fixing distributed systems, from bare metal to Kubernetes and AI pipelines. I’ve led SRE and platform teams through outages, breaches, and auditor marathons—then automated the pain away.

Security incidents are disasters. Treat them with the same rigor, SLOs, and automation as failovers.

Back to all posts

The DR Plan That Survived a Breach: Policy to Guardrails, Checks, and Proofs

Key takeaways

Implementation checklist