Strong cyber security is a critical business priority for many organizations. As the threat landscape has evolved, businesses now realize they need to take a more proactive approach to prevent, respond to and recover from cyber threats. One of the most proactive steps they can take is to focus on cyber resilience.
Cyber security and resilience go hand-in-hand, and the latter can serve as the cornerstone of a holistic cyber security strategy that effectively helps to mitigate the risks your organization faces.
What is a cyber security resilience framework?
According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, cyber resiliency is "the ability to anticipate, withstand, recover from, and adapt to adverse conditions, stresses, attacks, or compromises on systems that use or are enabled by cyber resources." To put it simply, cyber resilience isn't just about incident prevention, it follows an entire cyber security and resiliency policy framework. The emphasis is on your company's capacity to successfully recover from a cyber attack with as little disruption to your operations as possible.
Creating a cyber security and resiliency policy framework will outline the specific actions companies can take to help align people, processes and technologies to protect their businesses from cyber attacks and recover from these incidents if they occur. This framework encompasses several pillars.
According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, these pillars include:
- Robust IT asset management (data, applications and systems)
- Comprehensive user access management to ensure only the right users have access to specific information
- Proper risk and vulnerability management to identify, assess and prioritize security risks and close the most pressing security gaps
- Comprehensive incident management, which includes threat detection and response
- Training and awareness to build employees' cyber knowledge and empower them to be active players in helping your organization combat threats
A cyber security and resiliency policy framework is crucial for businesses today because hackers have become increasingly sophisticated and relentless. The number of cyber attacks continues to grow. According to FBI data, losses related to cyber attacks exceeded $4.1 billion in 2020, and the number of public complaints the agency received about cyber crimes grew 69% year over year—a record number.
Building cyber security and resilience into your business can help your company mitigate the financial, operational and reputational risks associated with a security breach. According to a recent Accenture study, compared to companies that lack cyber resilience, organizations that have this capability have four times the advantage in stopping targeted cyber attacks, a three-fold advantage in quickly recovering from these attacks, and a two-fold advantage in minimizing the damage and potential business impact of these incidents.
Your company can reap similar advantages by understanding threat research and focusing on cyber security and resilience.
Implementing a cyber security and resilience policy framework
Building your organization's cyber resilience requires a combination of solutions, services and strategy.
On the technology front, you'll need to implement robust threat detection and incident response solutions. A threat intelligence platform can provide 24/7 monitoring capabilities that help you identify and isolate threats on your network. Disaster recovery solutions can mitigate the potential business impact if a breach does occur, helping preserve critical business data and accelerate your time to recovery.
In addition, implementing a multilayered approach to security will strengthen your defense at every line. This strategy employs security solutions ranging from firewalls and intrusion prevention and detection systems to endpoint management technologies to strengthen security. It also encompasses strong password security, proactive patch management to ensure systems have the most up-to-date security capabilities and the principle of least privilege to improve user access management.
Managed security services also can help your organization strengthen its resilience. Working with a managed service provider that offers all these capabilities in an end-to-end platform or a suite of interoperable solutions—overseen by security experts with deep domain expertise in your particular industry—can help improve your cyber defenses and recovery capabilities.
Along with these approaches, implementing ongoing employee cyber security training and establishing strong risk management policies, including device management, password security and remote work cyber security best practices, can help your organization enhance its cyber security and resilience.
Building a more resilient organization
Cyber security and resilience is all about preparation and bringing your IT resources and capabilities together to identify and detect threats, protect your critical infrastructure, and effectively respond and recover if an incident occurs.
By implementing a cyber security and resiliency policy framework, your organization will be better equipped to handle cyber threats, avoid significant business disruptions and successfully execute your business mission even during the most adverse circumstances.
Discover how Verizon's incident response experts can help to enhance your cyber resilience.