IDENTITY & RECOVERY: THE MISSING LINK
IN CYBER RESILIENCE

In today’s digital economy, trust is currency. Customers, investors, and regulators all expect organisations to keep their operations running and their data secure, no matter what. Yet the twin pillars of trust – identity and recovery – are under attack like never before. 

Cybercriminals are still launching attacks across systems, but increasingly they strike identity platforms like Active Directory and Microsoft Entra ID first. By hitting the foundation before revealing themselves, they make recovery even harder. Once identity is compromised, users can’t log in, applications stop authenticating, and security teams lose visibility. It raises a vital question for any leader: if your organisation’s ability to prove identity was suddenly taken away, how would your business keep functioning tomorrow? 

Why CEOs Should Care: Identity as a Recovery Challenge 

Recovery is no longer just about whether you have a backup copy of your data. It’s about whether you can trust your credentials when you need them most. Without verified identity, the cleanest backup is useless. 

This isn’t a theoretical risk, it’s a board-level issue. Regulators are sharpening their focus on operational resilience: 

• NIST, ISO, and GDPR place identity and recovery at the core of risk management. 

• The EU’s DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) is holding financial services to higher standards of proof, requiring not just plans but demonstrable resilience. 

And the stakes go well beyond compliance. A prolonged outage can damage reputation, customer loyalty, and shareholder confidence in ways that balance sheets don’t immediately show, but boards feel deeply. It can also leave businesses unable to demonstrate conformity with frameworks like DORA and other regulatory requirements – exposing them to further risk at the very moment resilience is most critical. 

Identity in the Cloud Era 

The last decade has seen an exponential rise in the use of public cloud, PaaS, and SaaS products. It’s not unusual for even a small organisation to have over 100 integrations. Identity and Access Management (IAM) platforms like Microsoft Entra ID have become the glue that holds these environments together, enabling users and applications to connect seamlessly while enforcing governance and control. 

The challenge? This tight integration creates a single point of failure. Recent high-profile attacks have shown how adversaries exploit Entra ID as an attack vector: once compromised, they can move laterally across environments, escalate privileges, and ultimately strip access entirely. The result is devastating: users can’t log in, SaaS apps lose data access, and recovery efforts are paralysed. 

On-premises, organisations have long invested in protecting Active Directory with backup software, plugins, or specialist tools. But cloud identity systems like Entra ID are often left under-protected, with backup overlooked in the rush to adopt. Combine this with the vast amounts of sensitive data being uploaded to the cloud, often to power AI projects, and the risk grows even sharper. 

Imagine This 

It’s a Monday morning, and your team notices some unusual login attempts. What you don’t yet know is that attackers have been inside your environment for weeks, quietly exploiting Entra ID or Active Directory. 

By controlling identity, they control trust. They map your environment, create hidden backdoors, and prepare to launch their attack. When they finally move, they don’t just encrypt data, they lock down identity. Suddenly, applications can’t talk to each other, SaaS platforms are cut off, and your teams are locked out. 

Even if backups exist, recovery stalls because the very credentials needed to restore systems are untrusted. Operations freeze, reputations suffer, and the business feels the impact instantly. 

Harbor’s Approach: Recovery with Identity at the Centre 

At Harbor, our mission is simple: do right by data. That means treating resilience not as a box-ticking exercise, but as a discipline that balances technology, process, and leadership accountability. 

• Backup as a Service (BaaS): Fully managed protection across on-premises, cloud, and SaaS workloads. 

• Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS): Enterprise-grade strategies with real-time replication and secondary site continuity. 

• Cyber Recovery as a Service (CRaaS): Isolated, clean recovery from ransomware and other cyber incidents. 

• Lighthouse Discovery: A structured assessment that scores recovery posture, prioritises critical systems, and provides AI-assisted board-level reporting. 

With identity recovery built in, Harbor enables organisations to recover faster, minimise downtime, and maintain continuity even when attackers target critical IAM systems. 

A Customer Story: From Uncertainty to Confidence 

The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) holds some of the world’s most valuable oncology data. But legacy tape backups left their recovery strategy uncertain. 

By partnering with Harbor, ICR modernised its protection and gained confidence that it could continue its vital research, even in a crisis. 

“Working with Harbor has given us the assurance that we can recover our data in the event of a crisis.”
– Jonathan Monk, CIO, Institute of Cancer Research 

Beyond technology, Harbor helped ICR elevate resilience thinking, embedding recovery as a pillar of its broader cyber security strategy. 

From Backup to Board Assurance 

Resilience is now a leadership responsibility. Boards, investors, and regulators don’t want promises, they want proof. Harbor delivers that assurance by: 

• Demonstrating improvements in RPO/RTO compliance. 

• Running recovery simulations that test, not just plan, resilience. 

• Providing AI-driven reporting tailored for executives and regulators. 

• Aligning outcomes with frameworks like NIST, DORA, ISO, and GDPR. 

For executives, this turns resilience from a cost centre into a strategic differentiator, one that builds stakeholder trust and competitive advantage. 

The Road Ahead 

Identity and recovery can no longer be treated as separate disciplines. Together, they form the backbone of cyber resilience in a world where disruption is inevitable. 

At Harbor, we help organisations move beyond backup, to resilience that is proven, trusted, and ready for whatever comes next. 

Are you ready to understand your recovery posture?
Discover how Harbor Lighthouse can help your organisation focus on what matters, recover with purpose, and build confidence at every level. 

Email us: sales@harborsolutions.com Call us: +44 20 4566 5005