What is Cyber Resilience
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Organisations are faced with the problem of protecting their data from both internal and external threats on a daily basis. As our work boundaries become increasingly porous and the border between work and personal life becomes increasingly blurred, the critical and sensitive information of business is disseminated around the world. This introduces new risks that organisations need to manage.
Organisations are required to keep their customers, employees and any third party data safe, as well as guarantee that only authorised individuals have access to this data. This is why every organisation requires a reliable cyber resilience solution.
This post will assist you in understanding what cyber resilience is, how to measure it and the benefits of cyber resilience.
Cyber resilience is the ability of an organisation to transcend (anticipate, withstand, recover from, and adapt to) any stresses, failures, hazards and threats to its cyber resources within the organisation and its ecosystem, such that the organisation can confidently pursue its mission, enable its culture and maintain its desired way of operating.
A cyber attack or data loss incident can emanate from a number of events. This could be from a cyber assault, an automated command delivered during maintenance might cause operations to be disrupted, resulting in the complete shutdown of all systems. In a similar vein, a human error or a natural disaster can have a negative impact on a company’s operations and make it unable to provide service to its consumers.
The aim of cyber resilience is to ensure operational and business continuity with minimal impact. This is not just about the ability to respond and recover; it’s how quickly you recover and what we prioritize. There are a number of maturity models, which allow businesses to measure capabilities, digital transformation, supply chain, cyber security, and data management etc. However there’s currently no good way to measure cyber resilience, as there is no widely-accepted cyber resilience framework and no maturity level. Therefore, what might cyber resilience maturity look like?
Real resilience involves a multi-dimensional approach that dynamically responds to threats while keeping your business goals intact.
Measuring cyber resilience might involve:
- Identifying your crown jewels/assets and critical capabilities;
- Understanding the interconnectedness of your systems to critical business functions and how vulnerable you are to attacks;
- Understanding your supply chain, where suppliers you rely on are coming from and what impediments may be in place to continue to access them;
- Adapting more quickly to the broader social and political climate;
- Creating partnerships with peers, competitors, and public entities;
- Looking at how your team hires and develops skills;
- Changing your approach, so you are not only securing the business but enabling the business through security;
- Measuring whether you are maintaining a culture of trust and agility; and
- Measuring customer trust and transparency.
- Carrying out disaster scenario planning drills to test the company’s preparedness for a potential cyber incident
The benefits of cyber resilience
- Improvements and enhancements to your company’s systems security
- Better data protection
- Preparedness for natural disasters and their impact on systems
- Reduced monetary losses
- Decreased risk of reputational damage
- Decreased risk of breaching regulatory requirements
- Increased compliance with information and privacy protection requirements
- More efficient work processes
- A better workplace experience for employees
- Increased trust and confidence from customers
- A more highly skilled IT team
Success in cyber resilience can be achieved through transparency and trust. Fundamentally, transparency and trust are borne out of strong ecosystems, and a firm foundation for the type of sharing that builds and encourages resiliency. A strong ecosystem comprises policies and practices that allow leaders, employees and peers to cast aside doubts about the confidentiality, security and competitiveness of the information they choose to disclose when it comes to both internal and external engagement. Therefore it is imperative that leadership better incorporate cybersecurity and cyber resilience in their thinking and analytical process of potential cyber threats and understand various scenarios to prepare for potential cyber disasters while identifying incentives to improve cyber resilience.
