Bridging the Gap: Why the Convergency of Cyber Security and Enterprise Resilience Matters

With attack surfaces continuing to expand through advances in Ransomware-As-A Service, AI, and third-party attacks, achieving cyber resilience at an enterprise level is now business imperative.

Cyber resilience is the essential function of ensuring an organization can withstand, recover from, and remain operational during a cyber-attack. While many companies maintain dedicated cyber security and enterprise resilience programs, these teams have traditionally operated in silos, rarely interfacing and driving entirely separate response and continuity plans. True cyber resilience bridges the gap between these teams, creating shared knowledge, mutual support, and proactive partnership both before and during disabling cyber-attacks. Below are practical steps you can take in your cyber resilience journey:

 𝟭. 𝗚𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗵𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗩𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆. Advance beyond solely monitoring the enterprise network for vulnerabilities and security risks to monitor all IT environments, including Cloud, OT/Manufacturing, and Third-Party Vendors.

 𝟮. 𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘁𝘀. Update your asset inventory to ensure its comprehensiveness and conduct a dependency mapping activity to visualize the dependent relationship between key services and applications.

 𝟯. 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗲. Develop crisis-level cyber incident response plans that are harmonized with enterprise resilience, IT resilience, and related enterprise incident management plans.

 𝟰. 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀. Document alternative processing procedures to keep key services, functions, and IT capabilities going during a disruption that takes key IT systems offline.

 𝟱. 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽 𝗮 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝘁 𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲. Define sequenced actions for bringing key systems back online based upon priority and connectivity. 

 𝟲. 𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁, 𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁, 𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁. Conduct exercises to test the cyber incident response plan, business continuity plans, and recovery functions.