Cyber Resilience

Cyber resilience is the ability of an organization to withstand and recover from events that could disrupt the normal operation of computer infrastructures. It describes the ability to continue operating despite experiencing challenging events such as ransomware, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), social engineering, system failures, natural disasters and insider threats.

Cyber Resilience In-Use

Becoming cyber resilient is essential to preventing business disruptions. In order to become cyber resilient, an organization must first consider its current state security posture. Most importantly, the so-called crown jewels (i.e. critical business/service infrastructure) must be identified, prioritized, and protected. Actions such as application control and implementing the principle of least privilege can lessen risk and increase resilience.

Ways to Achieve Cyber Resilience

In cybersecurity, some best practices that contribute to achieving cyber resiliency are:

• Redundancy: Refers to having alternate ways to maintain the availability of a resource.
• Replication: Refers to having multiple copies of the same data available in multiple locations.
• Non-Persistence: Refers to the ability to maintain a system’s integrity despite multiple attempts of changes by the users or attackers.
• High Availability: Refers to the assurance that a system will be available to respond to requests and complete requested operations in a timely manner.
• Restoration Order: Refers to the sequence of mission-critical business processes that should be restored.
• Diversity: Refers to the multilayered security mechanism of having different types of access control provided by different entities/products.