Cyber resilience is the ability to prepare to, respond to, and recover from cyber-attacks and data breaches while continuing to function effectively. If an organization can defend itself against cyber threats, has adequate cybersecurity risk management, efficient threat protection systems in place, and ensures business continuity after a cybersecurity breach, it is cyber-resistant.
Cyber resilience and attack interface management have emerged as the two most important aspects of business resilience because they provide valuable protection for the entire organization.
Cyber resilience measures how well a company can continue to operate and deliver its goods and services as planned and expected. The primary objective of cyber resilience is to maintain the ability to deliver goods or services on time, regardless of the impact of a security incident or data breach. In short, cybersecurity is primarily about protecting oneself, but cyber resilience will inevitably be about surviving and thriving when these protections fail.
In today’s world, it can be catastrophic to focus only on network security and information security without paying sufficient attention to cyber resilience. However, we should see it this way: an organization simply cannot stop 100% of all cyberattacks launched against it forever; hackers can launch literally millions of attacks per day with a variety of techniques and technologies, and with minimal effort, they can create enormous imbalances. To win against hackers, it takes years of flawless operations when all they need is a single attack to breach network security. While defenders must successfully stop all attacks to prevent injury, attackers must succeed in various ways to achieve their goals.
For the sake of brevity, we should focus on a unique aspect of cybersecurity and involve people in the definition of cyber resilience. Because the risk of your business being disrupted completely for even one day is colossal, and your company’s reputation will suffer.
- Cyber resilience is the ability to provide intended services, operations, and outcomes continuously after the occurrence of a cyber event. One of the most important ways to protect your business from potential threats is to ensure that your customers can access their business functions and critical services they need even after a successful attack. A resilience plan must also include a recovery plan to resume operations as quickly as possible.
- Cyber resilience covers a broad spectrum, covering both cybersecurity and corporate resilience. It covers a wide range of operational resilience, business intelligence, and cyber risk management.
- Cyber resilience helps a company recognize that an attacker could have access to sensitive information such as passwords, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and other sensitive data.
- Cyber resilience helps a company recognize that hackers have access to sensitive information such as passwords, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and other sensitive data and can succeed in their attempts.
This concept helps the company to prepare for, prevent, and successfully recover from a cyber attack. Cybersecurity cannot be effective if the usability of the system is compromised. If the cyber attacks are successful, there is no way to resume operations even after a successful recovery from the attack.
This concept helps the company to prepare, prevent, and successfully recover from a successful cyberattack on the intended secure state.
Compared to cybersecurity, cyber resilience requires the company to think differently with a resiliency mindset and have a more holistic approach to system improvements. This definition tends to describe a cyber organization as an organization that will be able to recover from cyber-attacks, continue to operate very importantly after them, eventually get back on track, and better withstand future disruptions.
Cyber resilience also involves business continuity management. Google search results often include cyber resilience and business continuity functions that help a business with its overall strategy.
One of the reasons for the huge demand for cyber resilience is that, whatever preventative measures an organization has (remember those walls?), there is always a chance that it will suffer some kind of significant data breach. Cyber resilience is about responding and recovering after an attack, and this can be seen as an important part of a company’s business continuity management strategy as well as a key component of its business strategy.
The first step of cyber resilience is considered data security. In the NIST context, cybersecurity is a stage in a broader process of cyber resilience, but it involves more than that. The internationally recognized framework of the National Institute of Standards and Technology describes an approach to all aspects of cybersecurity. Similar to the NIST framework, it is called the National Security Preparedness and Response Plan (NSPP) for Cyber Resilience and Security.
What can you do now?
Andrew Robinson, Founder & Head of Cyber Security of 6clicks shares these value insights
“Cyber and information security is a critical success factor for digital transformation. Digital transformation typically involves making information and services more accessible through online transactions. Cyber and information security helps to ensure the right people get access to the right information and services at the right time.”
Performing a cyber assessment is a great starting point. An assessment will help you understand where your organisation stands in relation to industry standards like ISO/IEC 27001 and the NIST Cyber Security Framework, along with emerging cyber threats and risks.
But what counts is what you do with the results of your assessments. Organisations need to build a living and breathing system for identifying sensitive information assets, considering risks, mitigating risk and managing ongoing performance.
Take the 6clicks platform for a test drive by clicking here to see how this whole process can be automated completely eliminating the amount of paperwork that comes with doing an Information Security Audit.
You could use this platform to perform and manage any kind of system or framework audits.