Cyber Resilience

It’s important to understand that a cyber attack is not the only threat that can affect an organization. Sometimes an automatic command issued during maintenance can disrupt operations and make all systems go offline. 

Similarly, a human error or a natural calamity can also affect the operations of a business and render it incapable of serving its customers.

No matter the cause, a cyber resilient organization can effectively mitigate any disruption with an ecosystem of business resiliency solutions.

Cyber security, in general, refers to a company’s ability to protect against and avoid attacks from ransomware, malware, or other threats from an external bad actor. On the other hand, cyber resilience refers to the company’s ability to mitigate damage and get mission-critical systems up and running quickly following a breach. Cyber resilience can refer to both external threats, such as hackers and ransomware, as well as internal threats like accidental deletion.

With ransomware presenting a constant threat, no business today is perfectly safe relying on a cyber security solution alone. This is where a strong cyber resilience strategy comes into play. In an ideal, two-pronged approach, the cyber security solution minimizes the risk of attacks getting through, but when they inevitably do, a sound cyber resilience strategy, including disaster recovery, is there to minimize the impact.

Maintaining business continuity

A cyber attack can cripple an organization and slow down operations or, worse, bring the business to a halt. Being prepared for threats ensures that you protect your business from unnecessary interruptions, and get things back on track with minimal downtime in case a virus, malware, or ransomware slips through the cracks.

Keeping customer data safe

No matter what industry you are in, you have varying amounts of customer data in electronic form. This means that you are responsible for that data. Failing to keep the data secure can trigger fines, litigations, and diminished customer confidence in your business.

Adhering to data protection and compliance regulations

There are several geographical (such as GDPR or CCPA) and industry-specific (such as HIPAA) data management regulations that require strict compliance. A good way to ensure your workflows remain compliant is to build a strong framework for data protection and security.

Gaining customer trust

More and more customers are eager to learn how to store their data and what measures they must have in place to keep that data safe. A robust cyber resilience framework will help to build customer trust that you have safety measures in place and are vigilant in protecting their data at all times.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. You might already have several systems in place that will help you counter cyber threats. However, a cyber resiliency plan should consider recovery as well as prevention. 

To ensure complete protection, the business leaders and C-level executives of your organization should identify the most critical functions of the business. All such functions must be protected to keep the business operational during an attack. It’s also important to have a plan of action that details roles and responsibilities in the face of an attack. All of these put together will help you build a holistic defense system that’s ready for internal and external threats. 

Here’s a list of questions segregated by different stages of a cyber attack. Try answering these to quickly assess your organization’s present readiness towards a cyber threat.

Prevent

Do you have the right mechanisms in place to detect a cyber threat before it executes? 
Are your data protection and security software solutions updated regularly to prevent threat actors from gaining access through unpatched or vulnerable systems?
Are you aware of the gaps that caused a cyber attack on other companies in your industry? Have you sealed those gaps?

Protect

In the event of a cybersecurity incident, can you stop the spread of the attack without affecting critical business operations?
Can you identify the infected data sources (devices and servers) and quarantine or isolate them so that the infection does not go beyond the already affected hardware?

Respond

Are the C-level executives of your organization aware of how to respond to internal (board members) and external (shareholders) stakeholders during and after a cyber threat?
Does your organization have an incident response plan that details out the responsibilities of different teams when there is an attack? 
Can you respond to an attack automatically (without IT intervention) using automated incident playbooks?

Recover

Do you have the right orchestration and automation tools and services to get back on track after an event? 
Do you have a mechanism to recover lost data?
What’s the plan of action to fill the cracks that caused the attack?

Learn more about multi-layered cyber resilience for the enterprise.

Representative stakeholders of each organization must come together to decide what needs to be done to become cyber resilient. The best practices listed here are broad and can serve as guidelines while formulating the cyber incident response plan of your organization. 

Explore the best practices below, and learn more about cyber resilience in the Ransomware Survival Guide, an eBook highlighting in-depth strategies to safeguard enterprise data.

Understand the risks and always be prepared

If you wait to secure your cyber space until an attack happens, you are putting your organization’s data at risk. Prepare an incident response plan to counter the attack and mitigate the wide variety of risks that can arise. It’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when your organization will face a cyber threat.

Report the cyber attack to the authorities

During a data breach, if any customer data is exposed, you must report it to the right authorities. Failing to do so can attract heavy fines from several data governance and compliance agencies. In several countries, it’s not mandatory to report a cyber attack if no customer data has been leaked. However, reporting an attack can help law enforcement agencies gather more information about the breach and safeguard other organizations from becoming a victim of the same threat. 

Invest in cyber resilient solutions

There are several types of data protection, backup, and recovery solutions that you can use to keep your data safe and recover lost data after an attack. According to a recent survey, attackers are continuously looking for new ways to evade detection¹. The report urges organizations to adopt new defensive tools to counter the ever-growing ways attackers can exploit an organization and its data.

Quote:
“Organizations need to adopt new defensive tools that can counter this growing threat.”
– 2021 Cyber Threat Intelligence Report, Accenture

Regularly upgrade to the latest version of software and install patches

Cyber criminals are working day and night to find even a tiny vulnerability in software they can exploit to breach your cyber defenses. Companies often do not update their software or patch it as soon as updates are available. Attackers exploit the vulnerabilities in outdated and unpatched software to deploy ransomware and malware. However, using a cloud solution such as Druva eliminates the need to manually upgrade your software.

Modernize your IT solutions and move to the cloud

Data stored on-premises is not only vulnerable to software attacks but also physical threats such as natural disasters or someone willfully destroying the hardware. Moreover, public clouds such as AWS (where Druva stores data) guarantee 99.99% uptime and have internationally recognized third-party audits and security certifications such as Cyber Essentials. Your data is much more secure in the cloud than on-premises.

Educate employees about cyber attack vectors and how to avoid them

Several cyber attacks start with employees becoming victims of phishing. In fact, a recent survey by the Government of the UK revealed that 83% of breaches start as phishing attacks². Training employees about the different kinds of cyber attacks and how to identify them is a small cost to bear as opposed to spending a hefty sum to recover from an attack.

Regularly test out the system and conduct tabletop exercises

A system is only good when it works. You must periodically perform test runs and TableTop eXercises (TTX) of the cyber resilient system that you have put in place. This ensures that everything is working as expected and there are no loopholes or dead ends. Use a third-party cyber security specialist to conduct a fire drill and TTX so that you can effectively determine where the gaps lie.

With the world still recovering from the pandemic, times are hard. Organizations are looking for ways to cut costs as much as possible without making any sacrifices to the business. Therefore, companies are hesitant to invest in cyber resilience. However, many companies have learned that the cost of correcting everything after a cyber attack is far higher than setting up a cyber resilient infrastructure. 

If utilized properly, data leads to better decision making, enhanced customer experiences, and expedited business growth. Read the Value of Data eBook to explore survey findings from over 700 IT leaders, and metrics on why investing in cyber resilient services is a smart way to not only protect your data but also boost business value and ROI.

Enterprises today require a solution that automatically scales up and down in any location, providing cyber resiliency to data across multiple clouds around the globe. Druva’s revolutionary, cloud-native, and multi-tenant SaaS solution takes advantage of the public cloud’s simplicity and scale to provide a single solution for backup and restore, disaster recovery, cyber resiliency, eDiscovery and legal hold, compliance, and forensics.

The Druva Data Resiliency Cloud provides unified, easy-to-manage data protection for all your workloads. Manage one simple, comprehensive, scalable, and elegant solution to protect enterprise and employee data across SaaS apps, multi-cloud, data center, and the edge. 

Learn more: Explore Druva’s leading cyber resilience solution.

Now that you’ve learned about cyber resilience, brush up on these related terms with Druva’s glossary:

• What is ransomware?
• What is the 3-2-1 backup rule?
• What is a disaster recovery plan?