Building Cyber Resilience: How To Be Stoic As A Business?

In 2023, over 343,338,964 people fell victim to a cyber attack, and the number does not seem to stop growing. While traditional cyber security measures focus on preventing these attacks, perhaps even getting the numbers down, the concept of cyber resilience takes it a step further. 

It’s not about how you can defend yourself against a breach but rather how you can continue to thrive even after your walls are penetrated. 

Cyber resilience emphasizes your organization’s ability to recover and continue during and, more importantly, after an attack. Much like stoic philosophy that imbibes a sense of readiness for whatever the world throws at you, it is a mindset that aims to incorporate a proactive attitude, technological measures, cyber hygiene, and monitoring the right metrics to build a business that can thrive in adversity. 

TL;DR 

Cyber resilience is a proactive approach to cybersecurity that focuses on your organization’s ability to anticipate, withstand, and recover from cybersecurity incidents. It also ensures that your security measures are adaptive to evolving threats.

A comprehensive cyber resiliency plan goes beyond traditional security measures, emphasizing the continuity of operations during and after attacks. It realizes the inevitability of cybersecurity incidents and preps you accordingly.

Effective cyber resilience goes beyond building firewalls. It involves ensuring that your digital ecosystem is fortified against threats, from built-in security prompts to robust incident response plans that can handle a plethora of threats and vulnerabilities.

What is cyber resilience?

Cyber resilience is your organization’s ability to anticipate, withstand, respond to, and recover from cyber incidents while maintaining business continuity. It reflects a proactive approach that assumes breaches or attacks are inevitable, focuses on minimizing disruption, and ensures swift recovery.

For your organization to be stoic, i.e. cyber resilient, you need to equip yourself with good IT infrastructure, response plans, and a culture of cyber awareness.

What does a good cyber resilience strategy look like?

A good cyber resilience strategy combines proactive defense measures with rapid response capabilities, ensuring business longevity. It hinges on these 4 things: 

1. Anticipating: Recognizing and preparing for potential threats, like vulnerability scans, penetration testing, threat intelligence, etc.  
2. Holding down the fort: Maintaining operational processes and integrity. To maintain integrity, incorporate elements like access controls, compliance checks, or data encryption methods. 
3. Recovering: Normal restoration of operations after a disruption or bouncing back with minimal damages or downtime. To ensure this, follow data backup and recovery protocols and train your employees to identify and contain cyber threats. Ensure that your disaster recovery plan is airtight and comprehensive to cover a variety of incidents.  
4. Adapting: Learning from cyber incidents to improve future responses. If a disaster occurs, conduct incident reviews and security training to better plan and recover from future incidents.  

Cyber resilience has 5 moving parts and each of these moving parts need to contribute to ensure a strong cyber security posture. Let’s look at how you can ensure that. 

Components of cyber resilience

Implementing the components of can significantly enhance your organization’s security posture and operational continuity. By incorporating them into your strategy, you’ll be able to reduce vulnerability to cyber threats and improve your capacity to maintain critical functions during disruptions. 

There are five components of cyber resilience, namely:

1. Proactiveness

Proactiveness is a critical component of cyber resilience, which focuses on anticipating and preventing cyber attacks before they materialize. This shifts the paradigm from reactive to preventive, allowing you to stay ahead of the threat actors.

Being proactive includes:

• Implementing real-time threat intelligence.
• Analyzing cyber threats and attack patterns.
• Deploying AI and ML to detect patterns and anomalies. 
• Analyzing user behavior to predict insider threats. 
• Conducting frequent vulnerability scans.
• Comprehensive risk management strategies. 
• Implementing secure coding procedures and practices.
• Maintaining an up-to-date inventory of all the systems and applications.
• Training and awareness programs C workforce. 
• Conducting full-scale drills. 

Once you thoroughly understand the checks you need to have to be proactive, you can start assessing their viability and reliability. Regularly measure and report the metrics you have set and use them to drive improvements.

2. Detection

Effective detection capabilities enable you to swiftly respond to threats, minimize the damage, and reduce recovery time. Having an efficient cyber security program that has good detection capabilities includes:

1. Advanced networking security
   1. Implement firewalls that are capable of deep packet inspection and can filter all the levels of an application system. 
   2. Deploy intrusion detection systems that have the ability to detect signature based and anomaly based intrusions. 
   3. Ensure that your intrusion prevention systems can automatically block and quarantine suspicious traffic. 
   4. Your data encryption should be strong enough. 
   5. These systems should also be capable of detecting sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and persistent threats of advanced nature. 

2. Security Information and Event Management.
   1. Deploy a SIEM that has the ability to centralize log collection from various network devices, applications, and systems.
   2. Implement real time log analysis that can identify patterns that are indicative of a security breach. 
   3. Customize alerts based on specific threat level scenarios. 

3. User Entity and Behaviour Analysis (UEBA)
   1. Implement UEBA tools and protocols to establish baseline behaviors and patterns. 
   2. You can use machine learning algorithms to detect anomalies.
   3. Monitor privileged user accounts for any signs of compromise. 

4. Endpoint Detection and Response
   1. Deploy EDR solutions across all endpoints. 
   2. Enable rapid incident response capabilities that include isolation of compromised endpoints.

5. Deploy deception technology
   1. Deploy honepots that mimic real systems to bait and trap attackers.
   2. You can even create honey tokens to detect unauthorized access attempts.
      Implement network decoys to identify lateral movement within the network.

6. Implementing cloud security management programs, MFA’s that combine biometrics and tokens, and Data loss prevention systems to control the movement of sensitive data. 

3. Responsiveness

Respond focuses on your ability to manage the impact of detected threats. A well-planned incident response plan can significantly reduce the damage caused by an attack and minimize downtime. 

Here are a few things you should consider when coming up with a good response strategy:

1. Developing a comprehensive IRP outlining cyber incident procedures, roles, and responsibilities. 
2. Establishing a dedicated security team to tackle detected threats. 
3. Implementing containment strategies to quickly isolate affected systems or networks to prevent the attack from spreading. 
4. Establishing clear lines for communication. 
5. Implementing automated response plans that can take immediate action. 
6. Ensuring the efficacy of the business continuity plan. 

4. Governance

Governance focuses on establishing and maintaining a framework of policies, procedures, and oversight mechanisms. This component ensures that cybersecurity efforts align with business objectives. Here are a few components of governance that you should consider:

1. Developing a comprehensive framework for cybersecurity policies that cover all aspects of infosec procedures, from data protection to acceptable use policies. 
2. Implementing a formal risk management procedure that aligns with your risk appetite. 
3. Developing procedures that assess compliance with regulatory frameworks daily. 
4. Defining KPIs for measuring the effectiveness of the cybersecurity measures. 
5. Establishing governance processes for managing risks associated with third-party vendors. 
6. Implementing a process to review your security architecture and ensure its alignment with business processes, strategies and goals, and evolving threats. 

5. Adaptiveness 

Adaptation differentiates cyber resilience from cybersecurity. It acknowledges that even good cybersecurity architectures can be penetrated, but what sets you apart from the rest is how you are able to adapt and continue to operate. Adaptation also ensures that you are able to accommodate newer and more sophisticated threats thrown by cybercriminals.

Adaptiveness includes the following components:

1. Conducting learning and training sessions after incidents or even near misses to ensure that you are continuously refining your strategies to improve security. 
2. Ensure that the technology you have is adaptive to new threats and vulnerabilities. Ask yourself the following questions before you choose a tech:
   1. Does this platform have regular security patch updates?
   2. Does it offer automated patch deployment? 
   3. Does your tech integrate with threat intelligence feeds? 
   4. Does it offer ongoing vulnerability scans and testing. 
   5. Does the tech solution offer open communication channels? 
3. Designing a flexible architecture to accommodate newer security controls and solutions integrations.
4. Conducting scenario planning and simulations to test the workforce’s ability to recognize and respond to threats. 
5. Develop an agile incident response plan to ensure that you improve future responses from the lessons learned. 
6. Developing the ability to adapt cybersecurity strategies in response to changes in the broader ecosystem. 

Adaptability ensures business continuity by helping your organization be malleable to evolving threats, adapt to the crisis, and bounce back with minimal damage. 

How does cyber resilience work? 

Cyber resilience is about making sure your organization can keep running even when cyber threats strike. It goes beyond just preventing attacks — it’s about being ready to bounce back quickly and adapt, knowing that breaches are more a matter of when, not if. By blending cybersecurity with business continuity and risk management, you create a system that protects, responds, and recovers without missing a beat.

Here’s how it functions: 

Spotting risks early 

Risk assessments and real-time monitoring act as early warning systems, helping organizations detect issues before they develop into larger problems. Keeping an eye on emerging threats through intelligence tools can reduce the likelihood of unexpected disruptions.

Strengthen your defenses

Firewalls, encryption, and access controls create barriers that limit exposure, while measures like multi-factor authentication and zero-trust frameworks add protective layers without impeding operations. Even small adjustments in access management can significantly reduce entry points for potential attacks.

Act fast when trouble hits 

When incidents occur, the speed of response plays a critical role in minimizing impact. A well-prepared incident response plan can contain threats swiftly, isolating compromised systems and preventing further spread. Ensuring that teams understand their roles and responsibilities can make the difference between a contained incident and a widespread issue.

Recover 

Recovery processes, including reliable backups and disaster recovery tools, help restore essential systems quickly, minimizing downtime. Prioritizing critical functions during recovery ensures that the most important operations resume first, allowing for a smoother path back to full operational capacity.

Learn, adapt, and move forward 

Every security incident offers valuable lessons. Post-incident reviews uncover weaknesses and provide insights into improving existing defenses. Organizations that consistently analyze and adapt their processes become more resilient over time, turning setbacks into opportunities for growth and strengthening their overall security posture.

Three steps to achieve good cyber resilience

The recent global CrowdStrike event, which impacted millions of devices, is a sobering reminder of the critical importance of cyber resilience. These three steps offer a practical roadmap to fortify your organization against cyber threats, whether they come from malicious actors or well-intentioned mistakes. 

Step 1: Design the system with your people in mind.

This does not mean catering to everyone’s whims but rather designing a system that has user-friendly and practical protocols and integrates well with employees’ work. This factor recognizes human behavior as a critical factor in cybersecurity.

Here’s how you can design a system that can get you a faster rate of adoption:

1. Implementing intuitive software and security systems that don’t have a significant learning curve ensures that they don’t hinder productivity.
   1. User friendly interface, consistent layouts, contextual helps like toolkits, search functionality, customizable dashboards, mobile responsiveness, and one-time sign in features, are good checkpoints to remember when implementing a software. 
2. Crafting guidelines that are easy to understand and do not overwhelm the staff.
   1. Use plain language, employ visual aids, create an FAQ section, and regularly update them on issues. These are a few tactics to help you get through to your employees.
3. Ensuring that there are open communication channels and easy ways for employees to report breaches and ask for help.
   1. Ensure that there are dedicated hotlines to report security breaches, create email aliases for written reports,provide anonymous reporting, implement feedback loops, and send regular reminders. These measures can significantly improve the communication processes. 

Design is the first step in crafting a cyber resilience program, but the caveat is that you must ensure it is well aligned with your people. 

Step 2: Implement the designed structure. 

Transforming theoretical concepts into practical, operational defenses can be a mammoth task, needing the involvement of different business units. Here’s how you can make the process easier:

1. Phased rollout: Implement a phased rollout to minimize disruption. You can start by addressing critical systems and gradually expand to cover the entire organization. 
2. Deploying technology: Install security, controls and access systems based on the design. Implement firewalls, intrusion detection, and data encryption tools. 
3. Enforcing policies: Activate and enforce the new policies. You can also do this in a phased way, taking note of how people are reacting and adjusting to them, making changes as and when necessary.
4. Training employees: More than half of cybersecurity breaches occur due to human error, and to avoid becoming a cybersecurity statistic, it is recommended that you train your employees before implementing the plan. 

Step 3: Monitoring, analyzing and improving the measures. 

Monitoring a plan is as important as implementing it. Religiously understanding and improving cyber resilience measures ensures that your defenses remain effective. Here’s how you can improve the monitoring aspect:

1. Implement security information and event management tools to help you monitor security events, anomalies, and security breaches. Organizations that use SIEM report that it has enhanced their threat detection capabilities by 81%.
2. Regularly collect and examine data to identify patterns, vulnerabilities, and areas for improvement. 
3. Establish and measure your effectiveness against set metrics. Use KPIs like mean time to detect and mean time to respond as a guardrail for security incidents. A study found that a breach contained within 200 days can save an average of $1.2 million. 
4. Conduct periodic testing, such as penetration scans, vulnerability scans, and attacks, to measure the efficacy of your current security protocols. 

Is there a need for cyber resilience? 

You need cyber resilience, which acknowledges the existence of cyber threats and vulnerabilities and builds a plan for during and after a successful attack. Organizations must accept that no defense is penetrable, and that’s where cyber resilience comes into play.

1. Breaches are inevitable. Despite the best defense and software, attackers might still find a way through. Hence, cyber resilience focuses on handling these breaches effectively so you can resume operations with minimal disruptions and downtime. If an attack succeeds, how quickly do you detect the breach and respond with minimum damages?
2. Holistic approach: Cyber resilience takes a holistic approach to risk management. It’s not just about building the best cyber defenses and making sure that attackers don’t succeed; it’s also about how fast you can bounce back. This involves preparing for compromises, being on the lookout for advanced threats, continuous monitoring, and responding to security risks as swiftly as possible. 
3. Adaptive: Rather than being defensive, which could put you on a backfoot, cyber resilience focuses on being adaptive. A good cyber security plan should not be the only leg your organization stands on; it has to be adaptive to the breaches if and when they happen. This involves strategizing, improving defenses based on lessons learned, and maintaining a proactive approach.

How does cyber resilience benefit your organization?

Cyber resilience ensures that even when incidents occur, your core operations continue, protecting your reputation, revenue, and customer trust.

It benefits your organization by:

1. Limiting the extent of thefts and breaches. 
2. Minimizing the potential ransom payments.
3. Reducing costs that are associated with data recovery and system restoration 
4. Enabling faster recovery times after an attack.
5. Minimizing the productivity hours lost due to an incident. 
6. Ensuring critical data remains accessible even during attacks.
7. Help meet data protection standards and privacy regulations.
8. Maintaining the accuracy and reliability of data post an incident. 
9. Enabling quicker identification of breaches. 
10. Limiting the spread of malware within systems. 

According to Accenture, organizations that align their cybersecurity programs to business objectives are 18% more likely to see an increase in:

1. Growth and revenue
2. Market share
3. Improve customer satisfaction and retention 
4. Trust and employee productivity. 

Cyber resilient companies are better equipped to maintain customer trust and continue business operations during and after an incident. Additionally, companies are more likely to deploy new technologies securely, fostering innovation without compromising security. 

This balance between agility and security gives resilient companies an edge.

If you’re choosing to be resilient, choose Sprinto as your ally 

As you work to improve your cybersecurity posture, there are caveats that need to be covered. Traditional methods heavily rely on manual processes that are not only time-consuming but prone to errors. This is where GRC comes into play. 

Governance, Risk, and Compliance provides a framework for unified management of all three aspects of cybersecurity. Sprinto leverages the power of automation to strengthen your GRC efforts. 

Sprinto’s automated security assessments continuously scan your entire network systems for threats and vulnerabilities. This proactive monitoring helps you anticipate and prepare for any risks before they escalate. 

Sprinto’s compliance management features like automated compliance monitoring, customizable risk frameworks, regular risk assessments, control mapping, and automating evidence collection, among other features, enable you to stay aligned with industry best practices, and compliance regulations. The platform also deploys patches and system upgrades to strengthen your defense against evolving threats. 

Sprinto also helps you to roll-out enterprise wide policies and documentations. This ensures that your workforce is made aware of the threats that lurk and take necessary actions. You can track completion rates for these policies and even send out customized training modules. 

And It integrates with your current tech stack, over 200 plus systems and applications, eliminating data silos. 

Schedule a 1:1 call with our experts to strengthen your cyber resilience posture. 

FAQs 

1. What is cyber resilience?

Cyber resilience is an approach to cybersecurity that goes beyond traditional cyber defenses and focuses on an organization’s ability to deliver intended business outcomes despite adverse events. Essentially, it acknowledges that even the strongest defenses can be breached, and a continuity plan should be in place when that happens. 

2. What are the benefits of cyber resilience? 

Cyber resilience benefits your organization by:

• Ensuring business continuity during and after an attack. 
• Faster incident detection and response times.
• Better aligning your cybersecurity measures with business objectives. 
• Improving compliance posture. 
• Enhancing organizational adaptability to evolving threats.

3. What is the goal of cyber resilience? 

The goal of cyber resilience is to:

• Ensure that your business survives the attack and thrives thereafter with minimal downtime. 
• Quickly detect, respond, and recover from threats and vulnerabilities. 
• Protect critical assets and sensitive data. 

4. What are the pillars of cyber resilience?

An effective cyber resilience strategy hinges on these pillars:

• Identify
• Protect
• Detect
• Respond
• Recover 
• Anticipate
• Adapt 
• Govern