Cyber resilience in the cyber world

ASTHA KESHARIYA

By Dr Astha Keshariya, Information Science, University of Otago

Cyber resilience is a combination of cybersecurity and business continuity. It is the ability of a business to prepare, protect, respond, recover and rapidly reinstate normal operations during or after a cyber disruption such as ransomware, a data breach, identity theft or natural disaster.

Cyber resilience comprises strategies, controls and planned activities to be taken in response to a cyber disruption, to anticipate the impacts of that disruption, counter them and rapidly restore normal operations.

There are many components to an effective cyber resilience strategy: technical, functional, organisational, regional and national. Also, it must integrate many components and supply chain actors that are part of the organisation’s ecosystem.

Furthermore, the evaluation of the impacts of disruption may vary depending on the sociotechnical nature and purpose of the organisation: the requirements of a business in the financial sector would differ from one in healthcare and from one in retail.

RESILIENCE BY DESIGN

Today no organisation exists in cyber isolation. There is no such thing as a perfectly secure environment, service or product. It is a moving target that organisations strive to achieve. Thus, a fair balance between offering customers compelling solutions whilst maintaining sustainability is necessary in a dynamic cyber business.

The paradoxical nature of the cyber-attacks is that the organisations with the most advanced cybersecurity capabilities are most often attacked. Cyber attackers are drawn to high-profile challenges, which often have the potential to provide higher monetary rewards. Multinational companies are tempting targets for ransomware attacks or intellectual property theft. Government organisations are targeted by rival nation states.

It is impossible to accurately assess the global economic cost of cybercrime but experts suggest its dollar value is comparable to that of the global drug trade.

Cyber resilience-by-design based on digital trust is a strategy organisations can adopt to minimise the damage caused by cyber attack and to remain relevant in the digital world.

ISACA defines digital trust as “the confidence in the integrity of the relationships, interactions and transactions among providers and consumers within an associated digital ecosystem.”

It is impossible to accurately assess the global economic cost of cybercrime but experts suggest its dollar value is comparable to that of the global drug trade.

It follows from this definition that digital trust can be achieved only when all parties have robust cyber resilience strategies that factor in all their interdependencies.

Corporations and governments are on the path to digital transformation, investing heavily in e-governance initiatives, digitising critical systems, thus inviting digital ecosystems with multiple service and technology providers. An effective resilience plan must factor in all these relationships and interdependencies.

This also implies that the supply chains and critical infrastructures are at greater risk than ever. There has been a rise in supply chain attacks of 51 percent since 2021, according to Revenera’s 2022 Report on Software Supply Chain Compliance, mostly due to increased reliance on operational support systems.

According to a 2022 survey by cyber insurance provider, Munich Re, 35 percent of c-level participants are considering commercial cyber insurance as an essential part of their risk management strategy. The report estimates global cyber premiums to be worth $US9.2 billion annually and expects this figure to grow to approximately $US22 billion by 2025 for IT, manufacturing, financial services providers, healthcare, government institutions (including the education sector), consumer products and services.

This growth in demand for cyber insurance is predicted to be swifter than insurers’ capacity to provide it. And organisations pursuing cyber insurance will need robust cyber resilience plans if they are to sustain the cover. Frameworks like the US Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Resilience Review and NIST’s Cyber Resiliency Engineering Techniques, Resilience Management Model and the Guidance on Cyber Resilience for Financial Market Infrastructures by the Bank for International Settlements can all be used to help an organisation develop an effective cyber resilience strategy.

KNOW THY DATA

Nefarious players who are dedicated to identifying and exploiting loopholes in the data management strategies of a data-driven economy can bring business operations to a standstill.

Data protection has been a focus for cyber defenders for some time. However, the significant rise in ransomware and data breach events demands careful examination of an organisation’s:

• long-term data strategy keeping in mind business requirements to maintain single and multiple sources of truth of the information assets,

• its data architecture and data segregation policies to meet regulatory compliance (personal, financial and health data must be handled differently), its coherent policies and processes to ensure data security, privacy, integrity and quality, • data flows and data boundaries that are often blurred to the extended business liaisons and third-party service providers in the ecosystem.

EMPOWERING THE WORKFORCE THROUGH CONTINUOUS LEARNING

Traditional cyber defences may no longer be sufficient in light of recent cybersecurity events, the shortage of cybersecurity professionals and gaps in specific cybersecurity skillsets.

This situation requires investment in workforce empowerment to develop the necessary talents within an organisation.

This can be achieved with:

• targeted role-based training in addition to general cybersecurity awareness training for staff, suppliers and external entities involved in business operations; • skill enhancement through training and certifications for cyber defenders, specifically in cyber law, threat intelligence, cybercrime investigation, fraud detection and digital forensics to thwart sophisticated cyberattacks; • research programs on threat intelligence and cybersecurity automation that can help build the capability to extract, analyse and validate meaningful insights for effective real-time response and recovery efforts.

Awareness of the need for organisations to have robust cyber resilience strategies that embrace the roles of the partners in their ecosystem. Their shared goals coupled with mandates from regulators will lead to an overall improvement in cyber resilience in the near future.

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