Building Cyber Resilience

In today’s fast-paced, technology-focused world, there are many competing priorities for any organization’s leadership team. However, cybersecurity and cyber resilience should always be top of mind as part of your organization’s risk management and disaster recovery planning. Here’s how to get started with assessing and improving your cyber resilience:

What is Cyber Resilience?

Cyber resilience brings together information systems security, business continuity planning, and risk management to define an organization’s preparedness and ability to manage during a crisis. The crisis could come in the form of a cyberattack like ransomware, malware, a data breach, or many other types of attack, so you must be ready with a variety of defenses. Your organization’s cyber resilience is your team’s ability to defend against attacks, identify issues, formulate a response, and engage in recovery efforts as the situation calls for it. Having a comprehensive plan for each step of dealing with an IT security incident will determine how well your organization can recover.

Why is Cyber Resilience Important?

The consequences of having poor resilience can be quite substantial. If you are not prepared to handle a potential attack such as a data breach, things can go downhill very quickly. Your business could incur huge financial losses if major lines of operation are interrupted for a significant period. There may be loss of important data, such as during a ransomware attack. Attempting to pay the ransom could also be quite costly and may not even free your data. There are also the more difficult to measure losses such as losing customer trust if their sensitive data is stolen as well as the damage to your company’s reputation. Depending on the circumstances, your organization may even be fined or sued for the breach.

In addition to avoiding negative consequences in the event of a cyberattack, it’s also worth noting that a well-prepared and resilient organization will be better positioned than competitors in the event of a large-scale incident. If your company is able to mitigate an attack quickly and pivot the business to continue operations, there will be less financial loss, data may not be stolen, and your company can continue working.

Conduct a Cyber Resilience Assessment

To determine how well your organization functions under both normal operations as well as when faced with a crisis, your IT team should periodically conduct a review of all cybersecurity defenses, plans, and procedures. This should include assessing risks, identifying potential attacks and their vectors, determining how the organization can or would respond, and establishing where there are gaps in these steps.

An assessment should always be a realistic inspection of your organization’s defenses in order to determine where things can be improved or where additional defenses could be implemented. This will also help you identify areas where further education would be beneficial for your employees. Since they are frequently on the front lines of a cyberattack, it’s important to make sure everyone is vigilant and prepared to spot potential issues.

Work with a Trusted Partner

For some businesses, conducting a cyber resilience assessment and working to improve defenses and recovery plans can be an overwhelming task. This is when working with trusted experts can be an efficient and cost-effective way to ensure that your organization is prepared for handling cyberattacks and ready to bounce back. When you engage a trusted partner to assist with your cyber resilience assessment and improvement efforts, you will receive a comprehensive plan of action including identification of weak points and a roadmap for how to fix them. When it comes to your cybersecurity, it’s important to have experts setting you up for success. You can’t afford to do otherwise!

Need Assistance with Your Cyber Resilience?

At INSPYR Solutions, we offer specialized technology solutions to assist with the delivery of your most strategic initiatives. Reach out today to let us know more about your needs – we’re here to help!