Cyber resilience refers to the ability to work as normal despite becoming a victim of cyberattacks. Companies must prepare, respond to, and recover from these threats to deliver their intended outcome.
Why is resilience important?
With cyberattacks on the rise, companies need to adopt a secure cybersecurity framework to avoid being open to malicious threats. These types of attacks gain access to personal devices and networks, aiming to steal or get rid of significant data. This can have devastating impacts on modern businesses, including financial loss and a worsened reputation.
Often, businesses find themselves reacting to these attacks, rather than preparing for them. With these increasing cyberattacks creating havoc across the world, malware can spread significantly from singular devices to large networks. This puts thousands of systems at risk.
Despite increased security, it’s still clear that cyberattacks are a big threat to businesses globally. For example, attackers have exploited the current day situation of the global pandemic, enticing their victims with malicious attachments claiming to contain health updates.
Therefore, cyberattacks are a very common, new problem that needs to be combatted. It can be easy to inflict an attack upon a victim, but it is much more costly and challenging to get rid of. Financial costs can include policies for detection, prevention, and recovery from these attacks, causing direct business and customer disruptions.
The framework
Cyber resilience is important since it’s needed to prevent these devastating effects. The cyber resilience framework is made up of a few different key components.
Firstly, the business must identify critical assets, not to mention data and systems too. Through this, people can understand the resources in place that support all functions within the business system. Knowing what’s connected and which functions are critical is vital in this framework. Automated processes can allow businesses to know which systems and assets to take action on if a cyberattack takes place.
Next, critical infrastructure services need to be protected. This can include installing security programmes that will reduce any malicious threats. This process is sometimes known as cyber hygiene. Action like this will help preserve the system and network health, improving the overall security. Actions can include using phishing detection, keeping systems up to date, and segmenting networks. The action of segmenting networks divides the network up so that companies can contain a malware attack and stop it from spreading.
Detecting suspected breaches can also be a good step to take. This can allow action to be taken before any substantial damaging impact evolves. With this step, rigid security monitoring will need to be put in place.
Companies then need to respond to the detected breach. This will include a backup plan of allowing the business to carry on as normal in the event of a cyberattack. A plan like this is commonly called an incident response plan.
The final step in this framework is to recover. Affected infrastructure and services will be restored, creating a return to normal. These recovery backup solutions need to allow companies to preserve versions of backups and allow quick access to them.
How businesses can improve cyber resilience
Despite all efforts, cyberattacks are still a common occurrence. This means that improvements should be considered to minimise the threat as much as possible.
Firstly, involving everyone in the company would be the first wise step to take when trying to increase cyber resilience. Employees need to be educated on the threat of cyberattacks to reduce them. The workforce should be trained in cyber resilience. They should be able to identify malware threats and understand the impact of breaches. There needs to be strong communication and teamwork to get people into the mindset of greater cyber resilience. This will create a strong and secure base for the resilience framework.
Cyber resilience can also be improved by employing experts who are experienced in incident response. Having a professional in this field will allow the company to deal with any cyber breaches effectively. This will also help create awareness with board members to provide a stronger resilience framework.
Strong security policies may seem like an obvious step to take in improving cyber resilience, yet they can be incredibly effective. A solid risk management policy can prevent attacks as well as helping companies effectively deal with threats. Making cybersecurity a big priority in board meetings can help review these policies and practices, making sure that security is up to scratch. Doing this will help secure a quality level of cyber resilience.
Therefore, with cyberattacks causing huge threats in this modern age, it’s important to put cyber resilience in place and know how to improve it. In turn, this will put businesses in a safer position and prevent financial loss, making these types of policies worth it in the long run.
