What Are the Signs of a Good Cyber Resilience Strategy

What Are the Signs of a Good Cyber Resilience Strategy?

Published: April 1, 2022
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These days, everyone prioritizes cybersecurity. After all, staying safe in the digital world is just as relevant in our day to day lives as it is in business. We take steps to keep ourselves safe when using digital devices, avoid harmful websites, keep ourselves protected with antivirus software, and so on.

But what about ‘cyber resilience?’ What is it to be ‘resilient’ in the face of digital threats, and why have security specialists been focusing on it?

The truth is that cyber threats are evolving constantly. While companies can take steps to enhance protection, no strategy is perfect – and there will always be a capacity for human error, whether from employees or external service providers. Because of this, there is no flawless, surefire method to guarantee total and complete security.

With this in mind, it’s important to prepare for failure. In the event of a breach, a business’s services may suffer downtime, or essential functions like customer support might be interrupted. In some cases, there may be a public backlash, or a company may even have legal aspects to consider.

By taking a structured approach to assessing vulnerabilities and worst-case scenarios, organizations can prepare to deal with the consequences, minimize any damage, and get back on track as soon as possible. This is what is meant by ‘cyber resilience’: not only reducing the likelihood of security failures occurring but also creating responses to ensure business continuity when necessary.

While cybersecurity and cyber resilience are often treated as being synonymous, the two are quite distinct and in some areas do not even overlap! Organizations need to invest in both if they want to handle security issues as effectively as possible, but with cyber resilience often boiling down to potential worst-case scenarios, how can a business accurately assess whether its efforts are successful?

In this article, we explore the most surefire signs of a good cyber resilience strategy.

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Security-Conscious Staff

Anyone who regularly uses the Internet has to be aware of how to stay safe online. We use passwords, protect our private information, watch out for phishing scams, etcetera. A similar approach is required for work-related systems, with staff needing to be aware of correct practices, potential threats, and the consequences of security breaches.

This is an essential element of cyber resilience. It is extremely wasteful and unreliable to restrict security considerations to dedicated specialists. Unless employees are trained not to cause or catalyze issues, human error will be an ever-looming threat.

An organization with a good cyber resilience strategy will ensure that all employees are aware of cyber resilience best practices. Training and upskilling will take place for any teams, departments, or individuals with virtual footprints. This will greatly reduce the capacity for breaches via ignorance, not only reducing the frequency of security issues but also providing specialist teams with more time to devote elsewhere. At times, managers may even want to hold simulations with colleagues to test their preparedness to deal with worst-case scenarios.

One of the best ways to sustain such an approach is to invest in structured cyber resilience training. This helps guarantee that staff absorb all necessary knowledge and skills, especially with globally-recognized frameworks like RESILIA Cyber Resilience. Staff are also likely to support this approach, as having this kind of knowledge can be highly beneficial for a variety of career paths.

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Disaster Recovery Plans

Cyberthreats are evolving with the time, even as security specialists rush to keep up. Even with the best will in the world, there’s always a chance of something going wrong, and any company with a strong cyber resilience strategy is keenly aware of this.

Cyber resilient organizations will have plans for a variety of worst-case scenarios, with the intention of getting operations and value-generating services back to normal with minimal disruption. For example, a business may choose to accelerate migration to the Cloud to minimize the possibility of service downtime, or it may ensure teams have access to offline versions of crucial data when necessary. It may even consider appropriate responses to potential PR disasters resulting from particularly embarrassing blunders.

When an organization has a solid cyber resilience strategy, it has a range of plans and processes in place to minimize the potential consequences of security breaches in terms of both economic penalties and reputational damage. As a result, cyber resilient teams will often find the speed at which issues are resolved diminishes greatly. Even following disasters, these companies can get back to normal quickly and efficiently.

Cyber Resilient Change Management

As we have conveyed so far, effective cyber resilience is mostly about preparation. A company should be aware of potential threats in the digital landscape and assess its own vulnerabilities on a regular basis.

This need for assessment also applies to corporate strategy. Any major change or transformation initiative can create a new wave of new issues to address. Stakeholders should be aware of potential problems, along with worst-case scenarios, areas where vulnerabilities can be remedied, and what resources must be allocated in order to do so.

However, this also means planning for uncertainty. Nobody knows precisely what shape the field will take over the next few years. With this in mind, it is important to have a process for factoring VUCA challenges into strategic thinking.

So, how can businesses accomplish this? One of the best ways is to invest in awareness training for managers and decision-makers so that they can give correct consideration to issues relating to cybersecurity and cyber resilience. This does not necessarily require technical expertise, but rather a more tech-centric perspective to understand how digital threats can impact strategic goals.

It can also mean investing in governance or program management training for more tech or security-oriented candidates. With a greater understanding of how corporate strategy works, candidates with a technical background are better able to make their cases to stakeholders and decision-makers to ensure that cyber resilience is given adequate consideration.

Learning From Mistakes

As we have mentioned throughout this article, effective cyber resilience requires an admission that no security setup is perfect. However, as well as dealing with failures, it is also important to learn from them. After all, a security breach can be quite the useful indication of where improvements need to be made, whether in terms of vulnerability, awareness, or anything else.

In the event of a disaster, an organization should consider:

  • What vulnerabilities caused the event or allowed it to take place
  • What services or infrastructure elements were affected
  • What losses were incurred and where
  • How and when the event was detected
  • How security can be improved/ repaired/ prioritized to avoid similar events in the future
  • If an external provider was responsible
  • Whether the organization should seek compensation

With the right attitude, security errors can turn into excellent opportunities to optimize protection for an organization and its clients.

Continuous Improvement

For effective cyber resilience, a company needs to be aware of the changing threat landscape. Security staff should be aware of new threats before they become a problem and adopt relevant services, tools, and frameworks in order to future-proof as necessary. In some cases, it may even involve additional training and networking.

Of course, developments within this sphere do not have to be solely negative. These threats affect clients as well, and having solid plans and considerations in place can add to the appeal of digital services. As we mentioned earlier, most of us are well aware of how dangerous the digital landscape can be, making us more likely to choose products and services that approach the issue seriously.

An effective way to capitalize on this attitude and make it part of an organization’s culture is to invest in cyber resilience training. RESILIA Cyber Resilience is the world’s only dedicated cyber resilience framework. Based on insight from leading cyber resilience specialists, it presents candidates with a structured, flexible, and comprehensive approach that both conveys the value of cyber resilience and pursues it effectively.

Studying Cyber Resilience With Good e-Learning

Good e-Learning is an award-winning online training provider with a diverse portfolio of fully accredited courses in cybersecurity, DevOps, IT service management, and more. We work with highly experienced subject matter experts to offer courses that combine unique, practical insight with a training structure that helps candidates pass certification exams on their first attempt.

Each of our courses comes with a variety of online and blended training resources, including instructor-led videos, downloadable whitepapers, and regular knowledge checks. We also offer free exam vouchers and resits to students, who can study on any web-enabled device through the FREE Go.Learn app.

Good e-Learning also specializes in corporate training, with an award-winning LMS that can be customized to meet the training requirements of any organization. Our platform offers dynamic reporting on teams and individuals, letting us offer proactive help to candidates as necessary. Every client also receives a direct point of contact with Good e-Learning to discuss their requirements even as they evolve and change over time.

Want to find out more? Visit the Good e-learning website, or contact a member of our team today!