Cyber resilience is a critical component of any data strategy and with the recent Nato Cyber Defence Conference once again putting state-sponsored cyber attacks at the forefront of the IT agenda [1], there has never been a more pressing time than now to ensure your organisation is protected.
According to the Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2024 [2], UK businesses have experienced an estimated total of 7.78 million cyber crimes in the last 12 months, with 50% of businesses and 32% of charities reporting experiences with some form of cyber security breach or attack.
With that in mind, are you leveraging your existing technology stack to provide maximum protection for your business?
Layering your security posture
Developing a robust security strategy goes beyond a sole focus on technology but rather integrates a network of people, processes and testing to not only minimise your organisation’s risk of attacks but also ensure a swift recovery in the event of an outage.
A strong security posture is built upon multiple layers of defence around your critical assets, making it harder and more time consuming for attackers to breach. This means that, whilst they look to prioritise organisations to target, those that follow this approach become far less susceptible to a security attack.
By educating your workforce in good ‘cyber hygiene’, maintaining strong technical controls, monitoring your environment and restricting access permissions, you add a different layer of protection each time to defend against cyber criminals.
Developing a successful plan
With a ‘when’ not ‘if’ mentality towards security attacks, you accept the reality that however comprehensive defences may be, it has become impossible to eradicate the risk entirely.
What’s more, the implementation of new governance and framework legislation ultimately will not lift all organisations equally, creating what is known as a cyber poverty line.
As such, you are only as secure as your weakest link and so it is imperative that all elements of the aforementioned network within the business, come together in order to develop a successful operational resilience plan.
Managing resilience and recovery
At Proact, we understand that protecting business data is complex. That’s why we recommend a seven-step approach to operational resilience, namely:
- Preparation – assess the vulnerabilities and risks for your organisation’s data and systems.
- Backup – ensure a robust backup strategy for your critical data, systems and applications.
- Detect & Notify – put in place a mechanism to detect attacks/breaches and notify relevant stakeholders.
- Contain & Recover – should an attack occur, contain the damage and prevent it from spreading further.
- Investigate – identify any risks, vulnerabilities and security gaps by determining the cause, scope and impact of the attack.
- Remediate – implement measures to address any identified gaps or weaknesses.
- Recover – restore critical systems and data from the backup and ensure that they are secure and functional.
Unifying each of these elements will help your organisation to achieve compliance and efficiently respond to cyber attacks, whilst maintaining the flexibility to grow and change according to industry demands.
Ready to learn more? Then join us for our Navigating the Data Jungle events in February 2025 to discover how to transform your data strategy and build a connected IT ecosystem.
Register here for either the London event or Manchester event.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ceqxezer7nqo
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/cyber-security-breaches-survey-2024/cyber-security-breaches-survey-2024