Better Contingency Planning for Enterprise Cybersecurity

With advances in technology and increased cybercrime activity, experts strongly recommend businesses focus on operational resilience

For decades, contingency plans and cyber crisis management were just academic information. Companies would only address the breaches, attacks, or shutdowns when they were in the middle of it. However, 2020 was the year the educational exercise turned into a real-time cybersecurity strategy.

In recent times, cyber-attacks and potential threats pop up every minute across the globe. Such continuous events have pulled the brakes on effective enterprise security and the IT experts’ capability to create permanent security solutions. Experts urge the need for contingency planning. The goal should be to execute immediate alternatives for businesses to continue functioning without any major disorder.

Traditionally, contingency strategies focused on big disasters. With the increasing pace of technology today, cybersecurity leaders must focus on adapting, innovating, and testing an upgraded contingency planning that can curb all security disruptions.

Also Read: Building and Promoting a Cybersecurity Culture in the Organization

It must not halt at enterprises reacting to the threat, but it should address business continuity (BC) or operational resilience. According to experts, the most critical strategy that ought to be leveraged by companies is Operational Resilience Management (ORM). Through this strategy, companies can create opportunities for the employees, the business processes, and the data systems to withstand the change and adapt to the changing patterns. Experts warn enterprises to not allow the new, alternate solutions to affect customer relationships, customer services, and transactions.

With a majority of enterprises being service-oriented, most IT departments could defend the enclosed space against hackers. Since the pandemic led to increased remote working, the need for the ORM strategy began to escalate. The office servers had to be open for employees to access data remotely.

Data security got complicated. Additionally, cyber threats in abandoned offices increased as hackers were free from on-premise IT security leaders. Management and the IT teams struggled to adjust to the situation and also provide employees with security tools and business data visibility. Research indicates that failure to cope with such scenarios turned out to be more frightening than cyber threats.

The demand for ORM outspreads traditional network edge and now includes external endpoints such as homes, vehicles, truck stops, and other public spots. Meanwhile, the capacity for employees to abandon their workstations anytime, in case of an emergency, whilst continuing to provide for BC is one of the key points addressed in the upgraded ORM strategy. It is also advised that WORM (write once, read many) data be leveraged by enterprises. Such an immutable file system in the cloud that is highly resilient and difficult to corrupt, can help enterprises.

Also Read: 2021 Outlook – The Advantages of Cloud Services Outweigh On-Premise Solutions

Threat actors also have new strategies planned when opportunities like disruption and a weak ORM strategy of any enterprise is revealed. With all enterprise data moving to the cloud, a physical ‘safe house’ from cyberattacks is difficult to achieve, which indicates the urgent need for continuous monitoring and upgrades of contingency plans.

While the industry faces a financial crunch, funding for a comprehensive contingency strategy can be a major challenge for the C suite. IT leaders warn enterprises not to compromise as the upcoming technologies such as IoT, 5G, and AI will bring about even challenging environments with severe risk factors. Complex data and network infrastructures must be protected with ORM as it is crucial for business sustainability.