Digital intrusion has become all too common in today’s technology-driven world. Barely a week goes by before news of yet another major cyberattack or data breach hit the headlines. Last week, it was FireEye, a US cybersecurity company with government contracts.

The fact that a cybersecurity company that works with the FBI and the National Security Agency can be hacked shows that attackers are getting more sophisticated in their methods. No matter how good it is, your network security will not be able to stave off all hacking attempts.

Attacks are getting more resilient. Instead of focusing all your resources on securing your infrastructure, you should be working to ensure that your business will continue to function in the aftermath of a cyberattack. The ability to withstand a cyberattack and ensure continuity of business operations is known as cyber resilience.

Difference Between Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience

Organizations spend a lot of resources implementing various technologies to secure infrastructure and keep cybercriminals at bay. The tactics, processes, and methods used to protect data and systems are collectively described as cybersecurity. Cyber resilience refers to the ability to endure, respond to, and bounce back from a data breach or a cyberattack. Both cybersecurity and cyber resilience are equally important aspects of information security.

Common Threats and How to Defend Against Them

Hackers have upped their game in 2020, leaving the rest of us playing catch up. Ransomware attacks have become the norm during the Covid-19 pandemic. Phishing attacks are getting more sophisticated. We also have state-sponsored attacks, IoT attacks, and crypto-jacking to deal with. Organizations need to do more to protect themselves from these threats.

You need to ensure that you have malware detection, encryption tools, and a firewall in place to protect against intrusion. Don’t forget additional tools such as VPNs for improved security against threats such as spyware, DDoS attacks, and Wi-Fi attacks. And while all that is very important, we should not ignore cyber resilience.

Building A Strong Cyber Resilience Program

For your business to thrive and survive in the current threat landscape, you need cyber resilience. It’s no longer sufficient for organizations to have a cybersecurity strategy; they also need to be cyber resilient. Here are three essential tips to help your business build a robust cyber resilience program.

- Prioritize your efforts. Identify the most critical business processes and focus on protecting them. This will help you maintain critical business operations as your IT team focuses on recovering from the attack and restoring full functions.

- Improve cyber resilience with automation. Automating time-consuming and repetitive manual security tasks is a great way to achieve greater cyber resilience. Use automated tools for tasks such as vulnerability assessment, threat hunting, user behaviour analytics, etc.

- Involve the whole team. Cyber resilience education should be part of your business process. Everyone in the organization should be involved, engaged, and educated in incident planning and response.

As cyberthreats get more sophisticated, organizations have to operate under the assumption that cybercriminals will successfully breach their defences at some point. Being cyber resilient helps organizations maintain operational capabilities even under attack. That way, organizations can avoid a total collapse of operations and bounce back from an attack.