The techniques for protection against failures in optical networks have been discussed in many scientific papers. In the case of Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) optical networks, the p-cycles strategy of protection is a promising approach that combines the speed of ring protection and efficiency of resource utilization in mesh protection. In real networks, several optical links may fail at the same time when nodes or ducts failures happen. These sets of links with simultaneous fails can be determined a priori, and they are called Shared Risk Link Groups (SRLG). This paper proposes an approach based on Genetic Algorithm to find the best set of p-cycles that protects the network traffic against SRLG. Independent SRLG restoration is also achieved for better and faster network recovery in case of failures. This makes recovery faster and more efficiently. In addition we present a new algorithm for selecting candidates cycles, specific to this problem. The experimental results show viability of the proposed approach by achieving good performance in comparison to an exact algorithm of the state of the art. Enrique Dávalos, Máster en Ingeniería en Sistemas por la UNA. Ingeniero Electromecánico por la UNA. Programador de Computadores por la Universidad Nacional del Este-Paraguay. Docente Investigador en la FP-UNA.Diego P. Pinto-Roa, Ingeniero Electrónico por la Universidad Católica de Asunción. Alumno del Doctorado en Ciencias de la Computación y Docente Investigador por la FP-UNA.