Data breaches are a fact of life for businesses today. Most experts agree, it’s not a question of ‘if’ your company will be hacked, but ‘when’.
Scary thought, right?
So, if a breach is inevitable, then who’s responsible for making sure your business is prepared to respond and recover, quickly, with minimal disruption?
To get some expert insight on this, we interviewed our very own CEO, Alistair Mackenzie, on the Predatar Podcast.
In this blog, we’ll unpack some key takeaways from the interview to help you build rock-solid resilience in your company.
So, hold onto your hard drives, because we’re about to transform your business into a post-attack powerhouse!
What’s cyber resilience all about?
Firstly, it’s important to understand what resilience means in the context of IT and cyber security.
We explored the concept in our previous blog. Put simply, it can be described as your company’s ability to bounce back quickly after a cyber-attack, with minimal operational disruption.
Why is cyber resilience so important right now?
There’s been a noticeable shift in focus from cyber security to cyber resilience, and for good reason.
Gone are the days when the biggest data loss events were rare occurrences like earthquakes, floods, or an aeroplane crashing into your data centre.
These are one-in-a-million events.
We’re now in a new era of prevalent cybercrime, and cyber threats have become all-too-common. They are a daily occurrence.
Cyber-attacks, fuelled by advancements in technology, including AI, have dramatically changed the game.
If the scary statistic of a 1 in 4 chance of being breached isn’t enough to send shivers down your spine, consider this – cyber-attacks happen roughly every 39 seconds!
The financial blow can be brutal – the global average cost of a data breach in 2023 was USD 4.45 million, a 15% increase over 3 years.
With the stakes higher than ever, organisations need to be battle-ready for the inevitable cyber-attack.
But who’s responsible for ensuring that you can recover effectively?
Who is responsible for building cyber resilience?
Sometimes resilience can slip through the gaps – particularly in large organisations, with one department assuming that another has it covered.
Typically, the security team might feel that data recovery is the IT team’s remit, while IT assumes that everything ‘cyber’ falls to the security team.
In reality, achieving resiliency must be a joined-up, co-ordinated, multi-team effort.
What’s stopping Security and IT teams from collaborating effectively?
Traditionally, security and infrastructure teams have operated independently from one another.
IT/Infrastructure teams would focus on keeping systems running smoothly and ensuring everyone in the organisation had easy access to the data and systems they needed – whenever and wherever they needed them.
Cybersecurity, on the other hand, was handled by a separate team (CISO’s office). The approach was to build perimeter defences around networks, driven by principles such as zero-trust designed to limit access.
To achieve robust cyber resilience, these teams need to collaborate, and the first step is understanding one another’s motivations and challenges before they can come together around a common resiliency goal.
How can you build a cyber resilience dream team?
Here are three top tips:
1. Define and align goals and KPIs:
By defining and aligning both your security and infrastructure teams’ objectives and how they measure success Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), you can find common ground and clarity between both teams.
This clarity is key and helps you define what a successful cyber resilience strategy looks like for your company.
With this shared vision in place, you can build a dream, cross-functional team with the right skills and expertise, working together to carry out the specific tasks needed to achieve your cyber resilience goals
2. Invest in observability tools:
Here’s the reality: cyber resilience isn’t a ‘set it and forget it’ solution. It’s an ongoing journey of improvement in an ever-shifting landscape.
To track your progress, you need the right observability tools. These tools allow you to measure your current cyber resilience and security architecture, as well as monitor improvements over time.
Think of these tools as a fitness tracker for your data defences. They help you monitor your current state, set goals, and track improvement over time.
3. Plan and test your response:
The odds are stacked against you in cybersecurity.
Attackers only need one win, while businesses need to get it right every time.
This asymmetry in the threat landscape means you must be prepared for that inevitable breach.
The key to preparedness lies in two crucial steps: firstly, you must create a comprehensive response plan, and secondly, you must test regularly to make sure that your plan works.
This ensures a smooth recovery and minimises disruption when (not if) you get attacked.
Don’t wait until disaster strikes to discover that your plan is ineffective!
Final Thoughts
Cyber resilience isn’t just about weathering the storm; it’s about coming out on the other side of an attack as quickly as possible with minimal impact on your business operations.
With the right team, tools, and tactics, your business won’t just survive a cyberattack; it’ll continue to thrive despite it.
Want to Learn More?
If you want to learn more, check out the Predatar Podcast episode we mentioned earlier.
And, if you’re a cyber security leader, we’ve got a free eBook designed to help you close the recovery gap – download it and become a cyber resilience champion!
