Cyber-crimes are plaguing industries of all verticals and sizes, and there is no end to it for now. Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are particularly at risk since they have minimal resources to combat threats. Ubiquitously, across industries, there has been a clear call for cyber resilience gaining momentum. Cyber resilience is the backbone that supports an organization’s overall cyber security strategy.
Businesses today are compelled to operate in a threat landscape that is constantly changing, and traditional security protocols are unable to keep up. To ensure their continuity, they must reorient their attention toward a more practical strategy and turn to cyber resilience techniques.
Understanding Cyber Resilience
Cyber resilience relates to how an organization responds to data breaches and cyberattacks while successfully carrying on with its regular business activities. By employing cyber resilience strategies, IT security teams can cut expenses while swiftly identifying and containing possible problems before they propagate. While proactive security is a part of cyber resilience, it also takes into account measures created to reduce data risks after they had already affected the system. This covers strategies for guaranteeing business continuity and built-in redundancy. Cyber resilience acknowledges that there is no way to shield systems and data from attackers. Even with thorough defensive measures in place, data loss and downtime – whether caused by criminal activity, user error, hardware failure, or a natural disaster – can happen at any point.
The percentage of assaults repelled and breaches avoided can be used to gauge the effectiveness of cybersecurity, while recovery time (RTO), recovery point (RPO), and total system uptime can be used to measure the success of cyber resilience.
Making a Systematic Approach to Cyber Resilience
Now that we have established the definition, let’s examine a few crucial best practices for enhancing cyber resilience using a multi-layered strategy.
1. Bolster Organizational Loopholes
Malware enters networks primarily through phishing scams. Employees are tricked into downloading malicious attachments, using fraudulent emails, text messages, pop-ups, and web links. Training the workforce to be vigilant and to be mindful of any information they receive while acting upon it is highly critical. Employees must be trained on phishing simulations, IT and security best practices, data protection, and compliance needs. Vigorous implementation of such training programs will help lower the risk and frequency of attacks and incorporate a cyber resilience plan at the most exposed access points.
2.Sophisticated Threats Necessitate Sophisticated Security
Cybercriminals are highly ingenious and meticulous. They modify their strategies to get past network firewalls and other safeguards as organizations become more adept at spotting possible dangers. Businesses now need to implement internet security with threat intelligence to recognize harmful assaults that might otherwise look innocent. Advanced commercial antivirus software employs cutting-edge technology to find, stop, and remediate (by containing the threat) malicious threats that elude other, less capable antivirus software.
3.Employ 3-2-1 Backup Procedure for All Organizational Data.
Having backups of data is crucial for business continuity as addressing data loss is highly complicated. Impacts of malwares, like ransomware, can be reduced through the adoption of 3-2-1 backup strategy. In a 3-2-1 method, organizational data is duplicated at least three times overall, twice locally on separate media, and once off-site. This helps in reducing the data exposure in the event of an unforeseen event. Having both a local and an off-site backup provides businesses additional alternatives for backup recovery.
4.Make Sure to Conduct a Backup and Security Drill Periodically
It’s crucial to evaluate disaster recovery methods and procedures to be confident about meeting the recovery goals for the business through improved cyber resilience. And any recovery strategy is good only if it is tested out regularly. To make sure the company can be cyber-resilient when necessary, regular testing criteria once per quarter or, at the very least, once a year should be conducted. This will help evaluate both large-scale system recovery as well as simple file and folder recovery.
5.Hiring a MSSP
Businesses who are considering outsourcing their IT operations can hire managed security service providers. Managed service companies proactively keep an eye on a corporate servers, reduce IT concerns, and resolve any problems that may arise. The majority of IT work is now outsourced thanks to advances in cloud computing. Without being present on site, the MSSP remotely accesses networks and provides solutions for any computing challenges.
When employed, most of the MSSP’s offer all-inclusive solutions with vast IT resources. Daily network monitoring, Red Teaming, Incident Response, Cloud Security Posture Management, Infrastructure Security, Penetration Testing, Breach & Attack Simulation are all included in this. Businesses from a wide range of industries and regions are investing in managed IT services and support partnerships to outsource their IT infrastructure requirements, enabling their internal teams to concentrate on the expansion of their core businesses.
Businesses should be aware that no one cybersecurity solution can stop the sophisticated and constantly changing cyber-attacks of today. Despite intensifying security, cybercriminals can still access a company’s network and IT systems by taking advantage of human error or flaws. To develop cyber resilience throughout the organization, it is crucial to adopt cyber resilience in this situation.
