Building cyber resilience is very important especially when digital connectivity is a big part of businesses. Cyber threats are evolving every day and you need to defend the organisation against attacks as well as have a recovery plan in the event of a security breach.
You need to first have a good understanding of
The risks that are specific to your business and industry. You can look for manage cyber service providers that can help analyse the organisation for potential vulnerabilities. You can learn more about the services provided by these experts and the benefits of outsourcing this instead of having an in-house team. In a risk assessment, you need to assess the assets of the organisation and analyse the potential threat. You should also have a clear idea of the impact made by a cyber-security incident. You will be able to develop a targeted cyber resilience strategy once you understand the risks you are facing. You should have multiple layers of security to increase the resiliency of your organisation’s defence mechanism. This will include the use of systems for intrusion detection and prevention, firewalls, secure configurations and antivirus software. You need to diversify the defence mechanisms used so that it is more challenging for cyber criminals to navigate.
A common entry point for a cyber-attack is outdated software.
You need to regularly update all your systems such as infrastructure components, network devices etc. These need to be updated with the latest security patches. You should update your patch management so that vulnerabilities can be minimised. You can also limit the lateral movement of cyber threats by carrying out network segmentation. Here, the network will be divided to smaller segments that are isolated and each segment will have its own security measures. When this is done, a single security breach will not compromise the entire network. You will be able to contain the impact of a security incident in this way. You also have to consider the human element and this means turning your attention to employees and ensuring they have the right education and training when it comes to understanding the risks that come with social engineering, phishing etc. They should understand best practices in cyber security.
There should be sufficient preparation when it comes to building resilience.
You need to have a comprehensive plan that will set out the steps to take when a cyber-security incident takes place. You need to have a process to contain, eradicate and recovery from a breach. The incident response plan should be regularly tested and updated to ensure its effectiveness. Make sure to back up any critical data regularly and have these stored securely so that you are able to recover quicker in the event of an incident. This will minimise downtime and you will be able to safeguard the organisation against potential data loss. These backup and recovery processes should also be tested regularly to check their reliability. There should be proactive monitoring when it comes to detecting cyber threats and responding to them in real time. And you need to have monitoring solutions that are working continuously.
