Cyber resilience is pretty much as it sounds. The word “cyber” refers to computers and information technology, while the word “resilience” refers to the ability to withstand and recover from troubles. Thus, in aggregate, the term refers to the capacity of businesses to prepare for, react to and recover in the aftermath of cyber attacks.
Of course, ideally, your business will never have to deal with a cybersecurity threat, or if you do that your team is well educated and has completed CISO training, but the reality of the modern era is that it is likely that at some point you will be faced with one or more such menaces. In fact, the very notion of the implementation of resilience plans to deal with cybersecurity threats came about due to the heightened number and increased persistence of cyber attacks on organizations of all types.
1. Conduct a risk assessment.
Really, this just means that you need to consider what kind of data your business uses and what your current security procedures look like. Ask questions such as: Where is the information stored? What are potential threats (e.g. data leakages, loss of data, disruption to service, misuse of information, unauthorized access and etc.)? Ideally, you should conduct a thorough assessment, considering multiple types of information in order to gain an accurate portrait of your organization’s vulnerabilities.
Also read: What Every Upcoming Tech Business Should Know About Protecting Itself
2. Develop a comprehensive response plan.
After you’ve finished your initial risk assessment, it’s time to formalize the process for future use, since you’ll need to make risk assessments a regular part of your business operations. Formulating and implementing an incident response plan is crucial. The plan should delineate exactly what actions will be taken when/if a data breach occurs with the aim of pinpointing the location of the attack as soon as possible, containing the damage and expunging the source of the attack so that it cannot be repeated
3. Build a detection and response capability.
As part of your incident response plan, you should create an incident response team with clearly defined roles, responsibilities and avenues for communication. Simultaneously, you should put policies in place that will kick into gear in the event of an attack.
4. Spread awareness of escalating threats.
Meanwhile, make sure that all of your employees and clients–if applicable–are aware of the new policies and procedures, not only those who are directly involved in the creation of the plan or who are involved in the response team. Employees should be made aware of the possibility of a cyber attack and what one would mean, both for their day-to-day and for the company as a whole. Furthermore, everyone involved with your organization should be informed about best practices with regard to cyber security skills.
5. Secure remote working enablement.
In the process of implementing your incident response plan, there will be many variants and contingency scenarios to hammer out. One of the most important aspects of your company’s ability to deal with cybersecurity threats to consider is how you deal with the increased risks posed by a remote working environment. Especially if you have already enabled remote working, you should look into how this increased digital diffusion augments the risk of cybersecurity breaches and cyber attacks. Secure remote working should protect employees, systems, partners and sensitive corporate information.
The goal of cyber resilience is to make sure that an enterprise or organization’s operations are not disrupted by cybersecurity breaches. In other words, the successful implementation of cybersecurity resilience strategies will ensure that your business is able to continue as usual, safeguarded from threats that possess the potential to derail operations.
