Cyber Recovery Strategies: Why Building Resilience Matters

Across industries, from financial services to manufacturing, and life sciences to technology, data has become a vital business asset. Whether safeguarding intellectual property, patient records, financial information or proprietary algorithms, organisations now view cybersecurity as a strategic business imperative, not simply an IT concern.

While prevention remains essential, the risks of a breach, and the potential operational, financial and reputational fallout, are very real. It is increasingly clear that focusing only on defence is insufficient. The ability to recover quickly if systems are compromised is becoming equally critical.

Prevention Alone Is Not Enough

Traditional cybersecurity focuses on perimeter defences, such as firewalls, endpoint detection and access controls, to prevent unauthorised access. However, no system is invulnerable. Human error, advanced attack vectors and supply chain weaknesses can all lead to a breach, with or without warning.

Without effective recovery protocols, an incident can escalate from a technical fault into a full business crisis, affecting revenue, compliance, reputation and stakeholder trust.

Life Sciences, A High-Stakes Data Landscape

Nowhere is this more apparent than in life sciences. Here, the protection of sensitive patient data, proprietary research and intellectual property is vital. A breach can delay clinical trials, hinder regulatory approval, compromise patient safety and erode trust in institutions.

Consider the Synnovis ransomware incident in 2024. The pathology provider incurred direct losses estimated at £32.7 million in 2024, compared with a profit of £4.3 million in 2023. The attack disrupted services across London, delaying thousands of procedures, exposing approximately 400 gigabytes of patient data, and resulting in confirmed cases of moderate or severe patient harm. Recovery required manual workarounds and a full rebuild of IT infrastructure, illustrating the genuine commercial, operational and human consequences of a cyber breach.

While this example focuses on life sciences, similar risks apply across sectors. Whether protecting customer data, trade secrets or critical operational systems, organisations everywhere face comparable challenges.

Cloud Versus On-Premises, Different Strengths, Shared Risks

Choosing between on-premises and cloud infrastructure also shapes recovery strategy. Organisations managing on-premises systems retain full control over infrastructure and data residency, allowing bespoke security configurations aligned to specific regulatory and operational requirements.

Cloud environments offer rapid scalability, enterprise-grade security tooling, automated patching and inherent geographical redundancy through a shared responsibility model.

Both approaches offer distinct security strengths, yet neither eliminates cyber risk. Cloud systems require careful oversight of data sovereignty, vendor security standards and configuration management, while on-premises environments can suffer from siloed management, ageing infrastructure and longer patch cycles.

Regardless of the platform, recovery relies on clear planning, robust testing and integration with the wider business continuity strategy.

Embedding Resilience Into Cyber Strategy

Leading organisations now embed recovery planning into their cybersecurity strategy from the outset. This typically includes:

• Immutable, air-gapped backups
• Regular attack simulations and disaster recovery testing
• Clearly defined Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) that align technical capabilities with business priorities

These measures help ensure that critical systems and data can be restored quickly, reducing operational disruption and protecting long-term reputation and customer confidence.

How XPS Supports Resilience

At XPS, we work with clients across life sciences, technology and other data-driven industries to evaluate recovery readiness and design resilient architectures, whether cloud-based, on-premises or hybrid. Our approach includes technical architecture support, disaster recovery simulations and strategic guidance, helping organisations embed cyber resilience as a core business capability.

In today’s evolving landscape, resilience is not about assuming the worst. It is about creating confidence that, should the unexpected happen, recovery will be swift, structured and effective.