Disaster recovery planning and the identity governance gap teams miss

TL;DR: Disaster recovery planning is presented as a way to restore critical systems after outages, cyberattacks, and human error, with Zluri stressing objectives, scope, backups, testing, and role clarity. The deeper issue is that DRP only works when identity, access, and recovery ownership are already governed, making it a lifecycle problem as much as an operations one.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: How to Create a Disaster Recovery Plan?

Questions worth separating out

Q: What breaks when a disaster recovery plan excludes identity governance?

A: Recovery often restores systems without restoring control.

Q: Why do service accounts matter in disaster recovery planning?

A: Service accounts often keep applications, automation, and integrations running during recovery.

Q: How do teams know whether a disaster recovery plan is actually working?

A: A DRP is working when tests restore critical functions in the expected order, identity services come back with the right access state, and emergency privileges are removed after use.

Practitioner guidance

• Map identity dependencies into the recovery scope Add directories, privileged access paths, SaaS connectors, secrets stores, and emergency admin routes to the same scope document used for application recovery.
• Test restore procedures for access state Validate that restores bring back not only data but also the access mappings, role assignments, and admin continuity needed to run the recovered service.
• Define emergency access as a governed exception Document who can grant recovery-time access, how long it lasts, and how it is revoked once the incident is stabilised.

What's in the full article

Zluri's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

• Step-by-step DRP planning sequence with extended explanations of scope, risk, and recovery objectives.
• Expanded discussion of backup, communication, and role assignment practices for incident response.
• Examples of how automation is positioned to support SaaS recovery and deprovisioning workflows.
• The article's FAQs on recovery phases, plan types, and RTO/RPO definitions.

👉 Read Zluri's disaster recovery planning guide for the full step-by-step process →

Disaster recovery planning and the identity governance gap teams miss?

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