Cyber resilience refers to an entity’s ability to continuously deliver the intended outcome, despite adverse cyber events. Cyber resilience is an evolving perspective that is rapidly gaining recognition. The concept essentially brings the areas of information security, business continuity, and organizational resilience together.
Entities with the potential need of cyber resilience abilities include, but are not limited to, IT systems, critical infrastructure, business processes, organizations, societies, and nation-states. Adverse cyber events are those that negatively impact the availability, integrity, or confidentiality of networked IT systems and associated information and services . These events may be intentional (e.g. cyber-attack) or unintentional (e.g. failed software update) and caused by humans, nature, or a combination thereof.
The objective of cyber resilience is to maintain the entity’s ability to deliver the intended outcome continuously at all times. This means doing so even when regular delivery mechanisms have failed, such as during a crisis or after a security breach. The concept also includes the ability to restore or recover regular delivery mechanisms after such events, as well as the ability to continuously change or modify these delivery mechanisms, if needed in the face of new risks. Backups and disaster recovery operations are part of the process of restoring delivery mechanisms.
How to Improve Your Cybersecurity Framework
Here are five steps your company can take to improve cyber resilience:
- Employ A CISO Who Knows Incident Response
A survey by the International Information System Security Certification Consortium, or (ISC)², interviewed tech leaders from over 250 companies with a solid reputation and track record in cybersecurity. The study revealed that 86% of the organizations that perform well in security have a chief information security officer (CISO) at the helm.
With a CISO, your enterprise will have someone to champion cybersecurity at the C-suite level. They will help educate board members and garner their support for investment in incident response automation tools and developing a more comprehensive cyber resilience framework.
- Nurture a Culture of Cyber Resilience
Many companies make the mistake of leaving security solely in the hands of the security team. If only one or two people understand the systems, and how to protect them, the security posture will only get weaker as the company scales.
Enterprises must educate the first line of defense by encouraging the entire workforce to adopt a mindset of cyber resilience. All employees should know how to identify and detect malware and phishing threats, and they should understand the results of a data breach.
When it comes to security matters, leaders must promote teamwork, open communication and sharing across teams. Through peer learning and ongoing education, an enterprise can instill a security-focused culture that serves as a solid foundation for the cyber resilience framework.
- Create Formal Cybersecurity Policies
A strong risk management policy is an integral aspect of a cybersecurity framework. When your organization has documented proven security processes as part of their official guidelines, your employees have a reliable set of protocols to guide their efforts.
At best, a risk policy will be data-driven, which enlists your IT security team’s skills to identify critical assets and advise on how best to protect them.
- Make Cyber Resilience a Priority at Board Meetings
Keep in mind your incident-response strategy and overarching cyber resilience framework are live, evolving assets. They are not one-and-done tasks that can be shelved away. It’s crucial that you review your policies and security practices, and keep your data map updated.
The study from (ISC)² found that 97% of cyber-resilient companies have top-level management that understands the importance of a strong cybersecurity framework.
A robust security posture is not possible if all security issues are siloed in a single department. Enterprise leaders must check in with key stakeholders on security policies at least once a month. In doing so, your business can maintain a high level of cyber resilience, so the organization is prepared to respond and manage any threats.
- Offer Career Paths for Security Professionals
The best security professionals want opportunities for continuous learning and career growth. If they don’t see viable ladders up in their job, they will move to another one.
You can stop your best talent from jumping ship by providing ample training resources and chances for career progression. By growing talent within the company with ongoing training, you keep your staff engaged. In return for offering a platform that facilitates personal and professional growth, you cultivate a loyal workforce of highly-skilled security professionals.
Increasing Cyber Resilience as a Team
The key to building cyber resilience is to focus less on technology and more on people. After all, you can only tap into the power of data and leverage the latest technology when you have a skilled team in place to oversee your security operations.
Cyber resilience should not be left to the security team alone. Instead, C-suite members must work hard to establish a strong culture that promotes peer learning, open discussion, and ongoing training on the latest incident response tools and cyber resilience strategies.
With this holistic approach that takes all people and processes of the enterprise into account, your cybersecurity framework will be a constantly-evolving cornerstone of the company’s ethos.