Resilience is now firmly on the cybersecurity agenda. Organisations are looking beyond cyber defence, to how to respond to attacks and how to recover.
And governments are backing moves towards greater cyber resilience too; the UK’s Cybersecurity and Resilience Bill is just one example.
The Bill recently completed its second reading in the House of Lords, the UK Parliament’s upper chamber.
This, the Government says, will a “step change” in how we secure essential services and critical infrastructure. Its scope extends to managed service providers and data centres too.
And the Bill itself is just part of a wider shift in how organisations approach cybersecurity, and resilience. We cannot defend against all attacks; that is simply impossible. So the focus is now much more on how to withstand, and recover from, cyber attacks.
But resilience works at more than one level. To be effective, it needs too cover societies, organisations and individuals. Often, we overlook the people side of resilience.
Creating a resilient organisation can all too easily have a human cost, with cybersecurity teams are expected to do more, often with little in the way of additional resources.
Then there is the issue of the pace and volume of cyber attacks. Organisations might plan for technology outages or physical disruption as serious, but rare events. But some CISOs report that their organisations are under constant cyber attack.
This gives little opportunity for cyber teams to reset and recover.
So, for this episode, we’re pleased to welcome back the Cyber Agony Aunts, Amelia Hewitt and Rebecca Taylor.
They’ve just published their second book, Resilient You. The book looks at personal, physical, technical and organisational resilience.
And, as they say, we need to empower individuals. But we also need to hold ourselves accountable, and look after our wellbeing, during, before and after a cyber attack.
Featured image by Franz Bachinger from Pixabay
