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“We needed to find solutions to a variety of issues whilst being a complex business, operating in a 24/7 environment. Stripe OLT listened and understood immediately the challenges we faced.”
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Having a well-defined approach to managing a wide range of cyber risks is crucial for organisations cyber resilience, regardless of their size.
The objective of any cyber resilience strategy is to effectively prepare for, respond to, and swiftly recover from cyber risks, enabling businesses to maintain their operations with minimal disruption to workflow and processes. A solid cyber resilience plan is established based on a comprehensive assessment of the most probable cyber risks that your business may encounter, these risks encompass both internal threats arising from individuals within the organisation and external risks such as data breaches and ransomware attacks.
The persistence of cybercriminals knows no bounds. Leveraging automation, they possess the capability to target any organisation with a digital presence. The stark reality is that every business, irrespective of its industry, is susceptible to a cyberattack. In fact, a staggering 32% of businesses in the UK alone reported experiencing an attack within the past year. Relying solely on prevention measures is no longer sufficient for an effective cyber security strategy. It is imperative to prepare your business for the inevitable and equip it with the ability to withstand and recover from incidents like cyberattacks or data breaches.
Enter cyber resilience—an approach that combines information technology security, business continuity, and organisational resilience. Your cyber security strategy should extend beyond merely pondering how to avoid such events and delve deep into the specifics of how your business will respond if an attack occurs.
A cyber resilience strategy plays a crucial role in ensuring business continuity. It not only enhances an enterprise’s security posture and reduces the risk of critical infrastructure exposure, but also brings several other significant benefits. By prioritizing cyber resilience, businesses can mitigate financial risks, build trust with their customers, and gain a competitive advantage by delivering effective and efficient operations. It is a holistic approach that safeguards not only the organization’s security but also its overall resilience and long-term success.
Leveraging proactive and reactive defence measures
Leveraging proactive and reactive defence, like the adoption of a Security Operations Centre, is a vital component of a cyber resilience strategy. It involves dedicated cybersecurity teams working in conjunction with tools and policies to safeguard an organisation’s IT ecosystem, including networks, hardware, and data. Through continuous monitoring, detection, defence, and response, cyber defence helps protect against malicious attacks and unauthorised intrusions. In addition, cybersecurity policies and solutions play a crucial role in ensuring the security of remote workers.
Adopting the appropriate risk management policies
Risk management focuses on identifying potential risks that can impact an organisation’s IT ecosystem. These risks encompass various threats, such as hacking, data breaches, IT espionage, human error, hardware failures, natural disasters, and power outages. By thoroughly assessing and managing these risks through specific information security policies and processes, organisations can enhance their cyber resilience.
Adopting a business continuity plan
Business continuity refers to an organisation’s ability to maintain operational viability and provide uninterrupted services in the face of short-term disruptions. Cyber resilience plays a crucial role in supporting business continuity efforts, the widespread disruption caused by Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of business continuity planning. Organisations are now revisiting and enhancing their existing plans to address limitations and develop more comprehensive business resilience strategies.
Implementing endpoint protection tools:
With a growing number of attacks targeting workforces, utilising an endpoint protection (EPP) tool as part of your cyber resilience strategy is crucial. EPP tools proactively block attacks and help contain breaches if they occur. These solutions have advanced significantly from basic antivirus software and now include features such as content control, USB blocking and device isolation.
Utilising network security tools:
From firewalls to intrusion detection and prevention systems, network security should already be part of your existing security investments. These tools safeguard your organisation’s network and provide high-fidelity data, enabling identification of attack indicators that may not be available from other log sources. When properly configured, these tools can be the first to alert you to malicious activity.
Employing a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system:
SIEM is a software solution that consolidates and correlates security log data from various sources to generate actionable alerts. Implementing a SIEM platform helps your organisation monitor its environment for suspicious activity and understand the necessary steps to remediate any issues.
Implementing identity and access management controls:
By controlling access to resources and information within your organisation, identity and access management ensures that only authorised personnel can access sensitive data. This significantly reduces the impact of a cyber incident by limiting the data that potential attackers can access and exfiltrate.
Adopting security awareness training
Designed to educate employees about cyber threats and how to protect themselves and the organisation, security awareness training is crucial. When executed effectively, this training is engaging and has a tangible impact on frontline security. However, it is essential to ensure that security is genuinely embedded in your workforce culture to avoid complacency and unnecessary risks.
To build a robust cyber resilience strategy, you must focus on these key aspects:
Asset Management:
Begin by understanding and identifying all critical assets within your organisation, including systems, information, and services. This knowledge helps you prioritize your cybersecurity efforts and assess vulnerabilities accurately. By having a complete picture of your data landscape, you can detect breaches more effectively and reduce the delay between breach detection and containment.
Authorised Access:
Limit access to your network and systems to authorised customers, users, processes, and devices. Avoid the overuse of privileged accounts, as they can pose significant risks. Review and control user access regularly, and vet clients with know your customer solutions. Ensure that only approved individuals can access critical information systems. It’s crucial to monitor user behaviour patterns to detect any anomalies that may indicate potential security risks.
Disaster Recovery Plan:
Develop a well-defined disaster recovery plan and regularly test it to ensure your organisation can respond swiftly and efficiently to cyber incidents. Clearly communicate the roles and responsibilities of each team member involved, outline the critical tools and resources required for business continuity, establish data recovery processes, and create an internal and external communication plan. Learning from previous incidents helps improve your cyber security posture.
Employee Training:
Recognise that employees are a vital part of your cyber resilience strategy. Educate and train them on cybersecurity best practices, emphasising phishing awareness, password management, mobile device security, social engineering, incident reporting, remote work security, and all relevant topics. Promote a culture of cyber awareness within your organisation, empowering employees to actively contribute to data protection and the overall security posture.
Continuous Improvement:
Adopt a proactive stance in enhancing your security measures to stay ahead of evolving threats. Anticipate new attack vectors through techniques like threat modelling and leverage industry knowledge and best practices integrated into security products and tools. Machine learning and data correlation can help identify patterns and enable data-driven decision-making, ensuring ongoing improvement and adaptability to emerging threats.
By addressing these critical components, you can develop a cyber resilience strategy that effectively strengthens your organisation’s security posture, reduces financial and reputational risks, and enables efficient operations in the face of cyber threats. Remember, cyber resilience is an ongoing journey that requires continuous vigilance, adaptation, and improvement.
What is the difference between Cyber resilience and cyber security?
Cyber security is the protection of computer systems, networks, and data from unauthorised access and damage, it focuses on prevention, detection, and response to threats.
Cyber resilience is the ability of an organisation to withstand and recover from cyber attacks and disruptions while maintaining operations. It includes elements of cyber security but emphasises adaptability and recovery. Cyber resilience involves proactive risk identification, contingency planning, and measures such as business continuity, incident response, and employee training. While cyber security focuses on prevention, cyber resilience encompasses a broader range of preparedness and organisational resilience in the face of cyber incidents.
What’s the goal of cyber resilience?
The ultimate objective of cyber resilience is to minimise the impact of cyber incidents, reduce downtime, and enable the organisation to quickly return to normal operations with minimal disruption to its services, reputation, and finances.
What is enterprise resilience?
The goal of enterprise resilience is to ensure the organisation’s long-term viability and sustainability by effectively managing risks, building a resilient culture, and establishing robust frameworks and protocols to respond to both cyber and non-cyber-related disruptions. It involves continuous monitoring, testing, and refining of resilience strategies to ensure the organisation remains agile, adaptive, and capable of navigating through various challenges and threats in a rapidly changing business and technological landscape.
What are the three critical components of cyber resilience?
The three critical components of cyber resilience are prevention, detection & response, and recovery & adaptation. Prevention involves proactive measures to minimise vulnerabilities through security controls and employee training. Detection and response involve monitoring, threat intelligence, and incident response plans. Recovery and adaptation focus on restoring systems, business continuity, and learning from incidents for future strategies and evolving security posture.
For any organisation looking to strengthen their cyber resilience and take a proactive approach to securing their business-critical data, you can start with the basics and opt for the Cyber Essentials Certification. Alternatively, you can consider establishing a bespoke and comprehensive Disaster Recovery Plan, designed to help your business bounce back from any unexpected challenges.
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