It’s your job to keep your business’s operations running smoothly with robust IT solutions, but how can you keep your systems secure? Achieving absolute security is impossible, so as we approach the new year (and the cyber threats that will come with it) it’s time to focus on not just cybersecurity, but cyber resilience.

What Is Cyber Resilience?

Though often considered a cybersecurity synonym, cyber resilience is a distinct concept. Cybersecurity is the tools, technologies, and processes involved in preventing and remediating those attacks. Cyber resilience, on the other hand, includes the ability to mitigate the mayhem that attackers cause once they’ve entered your networks.

When evaluating your resilience, you might ask questions like: What measures are in place to minimize the amount of damage caused by an unanticipated attack? How quickly and effectively would I be able to bounce back? That’s where your cyber resilience plan comes in.

Building & Implementing Your Plan

Determine your essential activities

What’s required to produce your product or service? Once you’ve identified your mission-critical operational activities, you’ll know your resilience priorities—the business operations that must be restored as quickly as possible in the event of an attack.

Protect your critical services

During this step in in developing your cyber resilience framework, organizations should work on minimizing the likelihood of an attack by implementing cybersecurity solutions, such as anti malware software and intrusion prevention systems.

Detect & respond to cyber events

Your cyber resiliency strategy should include an end-to-end incident response program that consists of the tools, policies, and specific steps involved in detecting and responding to an attack in an efficient manner.

Recover and restore affected infrastructure

Under your cyber resilience program, cybersecurity, incident response, business continuity, and disaster recovery plans come together to help you return to normal operations with minimal damage and minimal downtime.

Best Cyber Resilience Practices to Follow in the New Year

Explore new practices & technologies

Bad actors use the element of stealth to facilitate their efforts, so you can’t afford to be relying on legacy systems. For example, if you’re using single-factor authentication frameworks, there’s a good chance an attacker could guess your password and work their way through your network unnoticed. To keep attackers on their toes, it’s time to upgrade your legacy systems and consider implementing next-generation technologies, such as AI-driven and advanced threat hunting solutions.

Get serious about testing

Bad actors’ capabilities are evolving and growing everday, which means if you haven’t found the vulnerabilities in your system, it’s only a matter of time before someone else does. Instead of waiting until you experience an attack to resolve security issues, take a proactive approach with ongoing penetration testing. The sooner you know what your cyber risks are, the sooner you can implement solutions for reducing them.

Mind the skills gap

Cybersecurity has remained at the top of IT skill shortages, and the outlook for next year isn’t great. As of September 2022, there are still more than 700,000 cybersecurity positions that need filling. What can your business do about it? Developing an effective employee rentention strategy will help defend your business against high turnover rates. In addition, consider outsourcing to cybersecurity experts who have the knowledge and tools to address the need for a wider range of cybersecurity skills.

Invest in your employees

With the right training, your employees can play a critical role in minimizing damage from attacks. However, increasing demands for remote working possibilities pose a threat to your business’s security. To keep your employee’s happy, experience the full benefits of remote working, and safeguard your business-critical data, you need to invest in a robust security training program that teaches employees how to recognize and respond to suspicious behavior as they work from home.

Improve Your Resiliency in 2023

Whether you need to fine tune a component of your plan or build one from the ground up, we’re here to help with a full suite of security solutions scaled to your business. Contact us today to improve your resiliency and get the peace of mind that you’re prepared to respond to evolving threats.