Preparation, detection, response, and recovery are the pillars of a successful cyber resilience program.
These steps can keep your organization functioning even when hacked or sustaining an inadvertent breakdown.
Don’t confuse cyber security and cyber resilience. They are different terms, although an organization needs both activities to mesh well.
MIT Sloan Management Review drew a smart distinction between the two.
“While cyber security focuses on keeping attackers out, cyber resilience aims instead to minimize the mayhem caused by attackers who do manage to penetrate networks.”
Resilience ratings?
The review predicts that the growing tide of ransomware will require companies to install detailed resilience plans.
“As cyber threats evolve, cyber security ratings are poised to become as important a factor as credit ratings, making failure to implement a professional cyber resilience program more than reputational risk. A thoughtfully designed cyber resilience program will become not only a competitive advantage but a requirement for sustained growth.”
If accurate, this prediction is even more reason to install a smart cyber resistance program.
Start with preparation.
Tally your current systems, technologies, and data sources, and determine which are most vulnerable.
This audit should include vendors, who can inadvertently let intruders access your system. Ask your cloud service about its resilience plans, too. What happens to your organization if the cloud service is hacked?
Establish policies for promptly reporting suspicious activity and conduct scenarios that help you determine what you need to weather an attack or an inadvertent incident.
Backups should be consistently updated and checked. Make sure employees know the location and requirements for backups and how to check for data integrity.
Automation can be especially valuable because it ferrets out abnormal or suspicious activity.
Frequent training is essential.
Detection is key
Your organization needs to stay on top of threat possibilities.
You can obtain valuable intelligence from government agencies and private firms that monitor hackers.
In addition, you can purchase software that oversees your IT system and looks for unusual activity.
How to respond
Your goals are to limit damage and resume operations quickly. These steps will reduce harm to your finances and credibility.
Your team should be quick to respond to news and social media and to take any advisable legal steps.
Time to recover
You will have to retrieve data and resume normal operations. Document your costs and the actions are taken.
And use this experience to take your resilience plan even better and stronger. Conduct a candid review to see what worked and what didn’t.
Cyber resilience is vital to an organization in this time of cybercriminals who seem beyond the reach of the law.
