Skip to main content
Cyber resiliency refers to an organization’s ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from cyberattacks and data breaches. The goal of cyber resiliency is to withstand cyber incidents and minimize their long and short-term impact.
Cyber resiliency, also known as cyber resilience, is an essential part of an organization’s overall business continuity planning. Just like your business needs a plan for what to do in the case of a natural disaster or financial crisis, cyber resiliency means ensuring that your organization can continue to fulfill its purpose in the face of a cyber attack.
In this article, you’ll learn about the key components of a successful cyber resilience strategy, and how you can assess your level of cyber resiliency.
Why Is Cyber Resiliency Important?
They say nothing in life is certain except death and taxes— and these days, you can add cyber attacks to that list.
72% of businesses have been affected by ransomware, meaning an attack is almost inevitable. Many IT security leaders believe breaches are a matter of when, not if.
Being prepared for the worst helps ensure your organization can maintain effective operations and get back to normal as soon as possible. Otherwise, the costs can be devastating.
Let’s consider an example: ransomware hackers attacked five hospitals in Ontario, Canada, in October 2023, stealing patient data and wreaking havoc with their IT systems. The hospitals were unable to continue functioning, which led to disruptions in patient care, delayed cancer treatment, and even a proposed $480 million lawsuit.
The lesson here? It’s critical to have a comprehensive cyber resiliency strategy in place that ensures your business can keep the lights on when attackers strike.
The Three Main Components of a Cyber Resilience Strategy
An effective cyber resilience plan consists of three main components:
- Detection: Identifying Potential Threats
Detection refers to an organization’s ability to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities before they cause significant harm. Proactive detection reduces the likelihood of a successful attack. It involves continuously monitoring and analyzing the IT network for unusual activities or anomalies that could indicate a security breach.
- Protection: Safeguarding Business-Critical Data and Files
Protection encompasses defending an organization against cyber threats. This usually includes security measures like firewalls, antivirus software, encryption, access controls, and ransomware protection software. Multiple layers of security are needed to safeguard critical assets and sensitive information from unauthorized access or damage.
- Recovery: Resiliency in the Aftermath of an Incident
Recovery involves resuming normal operations after a cyber incident. This includes having plans and processes in place for data backup, system restoration, and business continuity. Recovery is a critical component of cyber resiliency as it determines how quickly and effectively a business can bounce back from an attack or breach.
How To Improve Your Cyber Resiliency
The journey to improved cyber resiliency is a multi-faceted process that involves a combination of technical solutions, strategic planning, and organizational culture. Here are key steps you can take to enhance your cyber resiliency:
- Identify and Assess Cyber Risks
Risk management plays an essential role in understanding the cyber risks specific to your organization. This involves evaluating the potential threats, vulnerabilities, and the impact they could have on your business operations.
- Prioritize Employee Training and Awareness
Employees are often the first line of defense against phishing and other cyber threats. Conduct regular training sessions to keep staff informed about the latest cyber threats and best practices for cybersecurity. Foster a culture of security awareness where employees are encouraged to report suspicious activities.
- Perform Incident Response Planning
Develop a comprehensive incident response plan. This plan should detail how to respond to different types of cyber incidents, roles and responsibilities during an incident, communication strategies, and recovery processes. Regularly test and update the plan to ensure its effectiveness.
- Align Cyber Resiliency With Overall Business Continuity Planning
The IT organization may be responsible for maintaining critical functions and quickly returning to normal operations after a cyber incident, but it affects the entire business. Be sure to collaborate with other department heads and ensure the senior leadership team is aware of key incident response processes.
- Invest in Advanced Cybersecurity Infrastructure
As attacks become more sophisticated, it’s essential to build a strong security infrastructure that includes advanced cybersecurity solutions. CryptoSpike from ProLion is a silver bullet for cyber resiliency as it targets all three aspects: detection, protection, and recovery.
Improve Your Resiliency With Prolion CryptoSpike
CryptoSpike provides a last line of defense at the file storage level, detecting and blocking ransomware attacks in real-time. It uses AI technology to analyze data access in real-time, detecting anomalies and blocking suspicious users. In the event of a successful attack, you can easily restore the files you need thanks to the granular restore function.
Is Your Organization Cyber Resilient?
Every organization can benefit from conducting an assessment to determine its current level of cyber resiliency. This helps you understand where your cybersecurity strategy is effective, and where gaps exist that a hacker could exploit.
ProLion offers a free, comprehensive cyber resiliency assessment that considers vital aspects like:
- Which types of threats is your organization prepared for? (And which threats could slip through the cracks?)
- How security-aware are your employees? Is it enough?
- Is your organization able to deploy an agile threat response?
- Have you implemented the recovery technologies and processes needed to contain an attack and ensure minimal disruption to operations?
The assessment gives you a score for each of the three cyber resiliency components and includes personalized recommendations to help you improve. And it only takes five minutes.
Is your organization prepared to prevent, withstand, and recover from cyberattacks? Take the ProLion assessment now to find out.
