CIOs believe that organizations need to invest in both cyber resilience and cybersecurity to protect valuable assets and prevent data theft
This year has seen increased cases of phishing, hacking, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), and hacking. While such cases can cause complete disruption of organizational operations and reputational damage, the biggest threat today is personal data loss that can result in significant fines levied on the organization.
Cyberattacks incidents have increased; while bigger organizations can handle such fines, medium and small enterprises won’t. Secondly, such incidents significantly damage customer trust and loyalty. As a result, enterprises need to consider serious and effective investment in cyber resilience and cybersecurity.
Understanding the difference between the two
CIOs say that an accurate understanding of the two elements is important to ensure that the organization follows the correct measures. Cybersecurity is the enterprise’s capacity to protect itself and prevent any threat from a potential cybercrime.
Cyber resilience is the enterprise’s capacity to avoid damage to reputation, systems, and processes and continue even when data or systems have been compromised. It includes adversarial threats like malicious actors and non-adversarial threats like commonplace human errors.
CIOs believe that one of the main differences between both is that cyber resilience requires accepting that no cybersecurity solution is completely correct and capable of preventing every form of cyber threat.
A good cybersecurity strategy is a means for reducing the possibility of an attack being successful. However, when it still occurs, the cyber resilience strategy will help reduce the impact. As a result, organizations need both elements.
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How can CIOs bring these measures into practice?
Security leaders agree that practical cybersecurity measures are more obvious than the cyber resilience steps. A good cybersecurity strategy involves ensuring that all corporate devices run the updated firmware, antivirus/malware, VPNs, and firewall protection are up and running; all tools and software are updated with the latest patches.
It is also crucial to ensure that employees across all levels are aware of the possible threats and trained on actions that help protect the organization.
Each organization will have different cyber resilience steps; however, a good initiating measure would be to analyze and tag every cyber incident or event which has done the highest level of damage to the business.
Creating the list of which parts of operations are technology-reliant and where the valuable and sensitive data is stored will help CIOs understand how the service is impacted.
“Digital twin” is a concept that security leaders feel plays a vital role in the cyber resilience world. A simulated digital copy of the processes or organization will help them evaluate the total efficiency and output.
Once the security team has gained an overview and understanding of the impact on core functions, cyber resilience will help place measures to prevent maximum damage in case of an attack.
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They may choose to develop offline emergency processes to ensure continued operations of essential services like quality assurance, security, customer service, and finance until the issue is resolved.
CIOs also emphasize the need for a solid cybersecurity incident response plan that can clarify the steps to be taken after a breach or failure. A strong governance process that includes accountability, action, and compliances.
It should also cover steps on how to recover any compromised data, getting back the operations to normal speed, and analyzing and reporting the resilience steps’ impact.
Ultimately, cyber resilience is the ability to withstand and mitigate cybersecurity risks, but both policies are critical for an organization.
