Cybersecurity resilience: Why all business internet is not equal

Cyber breaches have always been an expensive and highly damaging event for businesses. Today, the risk has only increased. As threat actors ramp up their game, businesses have to stay vigilant.

On top of the financial damage, businesses also face severe reputational harm and legal issues when malicious actors are allowed to access their customers' confidential data.

With access to new tools and technology, criminals are becoming more sophisticated and effective. Today's organizations are responsible for building up their cyber resiliency levels and minimizing both the likelihood and impact of an attack.

Cybersecurity resilience requires proactive planning and a host of security measures.

A critical factor for internet resiliency is a reliable business internet provider that offers strong support. Not all internet providers are qualified to the extent required, and failing to choose one that can optimize cybersecurity resilience could weaken your overall security posture.

What is business internet resiliency?

A resilient business internet network contains features aimed at keeping your assets safe—which may include robust threat detection, software protection, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation and support.

These features combined improve your cyber resiliency level—radically reducing the risk of a cyber attack or breach, minimizing downtime and protecting your business from the devastating cost associated with these attacks.

Challenges to broadband resiliency

Truly resilient business internet can be hard to find, given the numerous forces that are working against it and the many challenges that need to be overcome. These challenges include:

• Increased threat actor activity. Ransomware was “more brutal than ever in 2024.”  Malicious actors continue to ramp up their efforts worldwide, and weaker internet networks are struggling to remain secure.
• Complex security solutions and vendor orchestration. The solutions and tools needed to successfully defend a network today are highly complex and sophisticated, often requiring third-party vendors and partnerships. Integrating them into a business internet network is no simple task, and much can go wrong.
• Network and asset visibility. The rise of cloud computing, remote work and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies has drastically changed the security landscape for businesses. Now, organizations need to secure assets and personnel across a wide range of different devices and endpoints as the organization's attack surface expands.
• Understanding an organization's acceptable residual risk posture. Even the most effective security solution will never be perfect. Residual risk is the level of risk remaining after all possible actions have been taken. Deciding what level of residual risk is acceptable for the business is a difficult (but critical) task for security teams. Any business internet network must comply with the team's residual risk posture.
• Trained cybersecurity personnel. No amount of security tools will keep your business networks safe without the help of expert security team members to effectively manage those tools. You'll need to work with people who understand all the features and leverage them to maintain cybersecurity resilience and a secure business internet network.

Benefits of quality broadband for cybersecurity resilience

These challenges represent a significant hurdle to ensuring and maintaining secure business internet. However, they're worth taking on, because a high-quality and secure business broadband network offers numerous benefits:

• Clearly understanding your cyber defense shortcomings through strong network visibility and proactive monitoring allows you to gain a much more complete and insightful view of your network. This, in turn, will enable you to make informed decisions, such as making strategic investments that support the organization's business objectives and keeping your assets as safe as possible. Your cyber resiliency level can improve dramatically.
• You're able to align your security strategy in a way that guides policies around people, processes, and technologies. This allows for a much more comprehensive and coordinated response in the face of an attack.
• It allows you to take a proactive approach to cyber risk management. Being proactive means you can handle threats before they take effect, reducing a threat actor's ability to inflict any damage on your organization and minimizing the risk.

Optimize your cyber resiliency level

Choosing the right business internet for your organization can have profound cybersecurity resilience implications. With the right set of features and tools, you'll be able to access objective and data-driven risk analysis; anticipate, detect, and prepare for cyber attacks; and respond quickly and effectively.

Ultimately, with the right partner for your business internet, you can mitigate the destruction and theft of data, protect your customers' valuable personal information, protect your resources and reputation, and ramp up your cyber resiliency level.

Learn more about how Verizon can help optimize your cybersecurity resilience with secure internet solutions.

The author of this content is a paid contributor for Verizon.