2024: the year for cyber resilience

Guest post by Francis O’Haire, Group CTO of DataSolutions, a Climb Company

If 2023 was the year of cybersecurity, 2024 is the year for cyber resilience. With a rising wave of more sophisticated attacks and an ever-widening skills gap, the focus and spend on cybersecurity solutions is likely to intensify this year.

However, budgets aren’t the only thing that businesses need to look at when it comes to protecting themselves. They also need to switch their mindset from “what if” to “what now”, turning the question from “what if we are attacked?” to “what now that we’ve been breached?”

Cyber resilience is to cyber security what disaster recovery is to data backup. In each case, the first term is a holistic and strategic approach, while the latter is a tactical component. And cyber resilience is, in itself, a very important element in any business continuity strategy.

Bouncing back

While cyber security primarily focuses on the detection and prevention of attacks, cyber resilience emphasises an organisation’s ability to bounce back from or withstand cyber incidents when they happen. In other words, cyber resilience essentially acknowledges that breaches will occur and focuses on minimising their impact.

This position of resilience involves planning and preparation, but also adaptability. It incorporates strategies for incident response, continuity, and rapid recovery. Essentially, it is the backup plan to ensure that data is recoverable, immutable, and secure.

It requires companies to have solutions and processes in place so that when a breach occurs, it can be managed efficiently and effectively. As part of this, critical systems and data need to be adequately safeguarded for the worst-case scenario. Meanwhile, organisations need to be able to continue operating to some degree during such incidents and return to normality as soon as possible.

Following through

Cyber resilience is also critical in terms of how manufacturers and software companies develop their products. They should take a “secure by design” approach which ensures that cybersecurity considerations are woven into every stage of the design process. It therefore becomes a requisite from the beginning, as opposed to a recommendation or after-thought.

With an increasing number of regulatory standards – including the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), the EU Cyber Resilience Act, and NIS2 – encompassing the idea of cyber resiliency, organisations need to navigate this area carefully and uphold requirements.

For example, the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is aimed at strengthening the IT security of financial entities and ensuring the sector can remain resilient in the event of severe operational disruption. Such resiliency could limit the disruption not only to a company working in the financial services sector but also other organisations and industries, as well as the wider economy. Indeed, entire value chains need to be considered when addressing cyber resilience, as a disruption to one supplier or partner can bring an entire organisation to its knees.

Changing tact

The use of technology in addressing cyber resilience is undoubtedly important, but businesses need to move on from legacy cyber security approaches and consider solutions which better address the modern threat landscape. Systems which focus on prevention rather than the mere detection of attacks need to be favoured and perimeter defences need to be augmented with more comprehensive “Zero Trust” architectures that can better address the protection of modern multi-cloud IT environments and dispersed workforces.

Such technologies and strategies can really help to overcome the challenges facing modern workplaces. They can deliver better visibility and improved monitoring, while controlling access and protecting data. In turn, this increases cyber resilience, which isn’t just crucial for individual organisations but society as a whole.

We are more reliant on technology than ever before, which means interruptions have a much more significant impact. As with the financial services industry, such incidents can be devastating for critical infrastructure such as transport, healthcare, and utilities. Moreover, every business has partners or customers that could also be impacted if their cyber resilience isn’t up to scratch.

While implementing the right technology to increase cyber resilience is critical, it’s about more than technology. It’s about processes and strategies, as well as people and corporate culture. All of these components need to be aligned towards the goal of cyber resilience, otherwise companies will leave themselves vulnerable.

That means changing tact, instilling the mindset of “what now” instead of “what if”, and following through, applying it to every process. Only then will organisations be fully equipped to effectively detect, manage and – most crucially – bounce back from a cyber incident.

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