What Is Cyber Resilience and Why Does It Matter?

Cybercriminals are getting bolder by the day, launching all kinds of attacks. Unlike the past when they used to operate in the dark web, nowadays, they operate in the public domain—an indication that cyberattacks are a part of our lives.

The message is clear: If you don’t beef up your security, you’ll suffer the consequences. Cyber resilience helps you secure your digital assets with a robust security framework. In this article, you’ll learn more about cyber resilience, how it works, and its numerous benefits.

What Is Cyber Resilience?

Cyber resilience refers to your ability to not only secure your system but also keep it running regardless of the threats or attacks it faces. Centered on building strong security defenses, it recognizes the possibility of cyberattacks. But instead of cowering in fear or closing shop, it encourages you to stand up for yourself and continue your operations.

In today’s highly volatile cyberspace, cyber resilience comes in handy. Hackers aren’t throwing in the towel any time soon. As a matter of fact, they are acquiring more skills to enhance their hacking techniques. If you fail to secure your system, you are offering it to them on a platter of gold. While attackers are improving their skills, you must tighten your security to give them a run for their money.

What Is the Difference Between Cyber Resilience and Cybersecurity?

People often use cyber resilience and cybersecurity interchangeably, connoting that they have the same meaning. While both concepts share a common goal of ensuring security, they are different in implementation.

Cybersecurity emphasizes strategies you deploy to prevent cyber threats from penetrating your system. A preventive measure, it focuses on what you can do before an attack happens. Cyber resilience, on the hand, is about resisting and surviving cyberattacks. It involves setting up a structure to navigate the entire lifecycle of an attack. Cyber resilience is a broader scope of cybersecurity.

How Does Cyber Resilience Work?

Cyberattacks are enormous. Just when you think you have figured out the best way to secure your system, attackers develop new techniques. In light of this, cyber resilience posits that there’s no definite strategy for securing your digital assets. It calls for a collective security strategy with multiple layers.

To implement effective cyber resilience, you must create a strong defense and recovery strategies. Your first goal is to protect your data from unauthorized access. At this stage, you explore techniques such as endpoint security, access control, and attack surface management among others.

Cyber resilience takes your security a notch higher by exploring strategies for mitigating attacks so that their impacts won’t disrupt your operations. Here, you examine various options in your incident response plan including data recovery and backup.

A high sense of security awareness is key to cyber resilience. You must understand what to do before and after an attack.

A robust cyber resilience framework executes the following steps.

1. Identify cyber threats, risks, and vulnerabilities.
2. Implement security defenses to protect your system and its digital assets.
3. Monitor your security framework to discover loopholes.
4. Respond to cyber threats and attacks by following the strategies you have documented in your incident response plan.
5. Initiate a recovery plan to minimize the impact of an attack on your network.
6. Track your operations for continuous improvement.

What Are the Benefits of Cyber Resilience?

Cyber resilience doesn’t entertain fear of an attack. Instead, it spurs you into creating a security framework you can trust to push back against attacks. Once you get a hang of it, you’ll enjoy the following benefits.

1. Minimize Downtime

A well-planned cyberattack thwarts your operations, forcing your system to either shut down or be inaccessible. Whatever work you have to do has to wait—that’s the attackers’ way of holding you to ransom. Depending on the nature of your system, you could suffer financial losses in the process. This is exactly what hackers want you to go through and they’ll be happy to elongate the downtime until they get what they what.

Cyber resilience helps you prevent downtime, or at least, reduce it to the barest minimum because you have the infrastructure to bounce back almost immediately. If you have a strong and swift incident response plan, outsiders may not even notice any disruption to your operations.

2. Protect Your Privacy

Data assets are usually the main targets of cyberattackers. They understand that, once they get hold of your private data, you’ll do their bidding due to your fear of sensitive data exposure.

Cooperating with hackers is important during ransomware negotiations but it doesn’t guarantee that they’ll restore your data, and neither does it guarantee that they won’t expose it. There have been cases where hackers exposed victims’ data even after the victims did their bidding.

Cyber resilience protects your privacy by tightening the security walls of your data assets. You can prioritize your most sensitive data, making it twice as hard for hackers to get a hold of them.

3. Increase Recovery Time

Depending on the level of damage a cyberattack victim suffers, they may require several weeks and even months to recover and get their system back to normal operations. Unfortunately, some people never recover from an attack.

Cyber resilience mitigates losses and increases your recovery time. Since you already have a list of actionable steps to take, you can swing into recovery mode by implementing the steps as fast as possible.

4. Enhance Compliance and Loyalty

If you have users’ information on your system, suffering a data breach will expose their information and ultimately make them lose faith in you. Your reputation will go down the drain, leaving you with possible lawsuits due to your non-compliance with privacy regulations.

On a positive note, the loyalty and confidence of your users will steadily increase if you can secure your system against threats and attacks.

Securing Your Digital Assets With Cyber Resilience

Attackers prey on the lack of security. And they continue to be successful, raking in billions of dollars due to the ignorance, negligence, and reluctance of internet users to prioritize their security.

Since cybercriminals are bent on coming for your digital assets, the least you can do is defend your system. Build your security arsenal ahead of time in anticipation of when you’ll need it. When attackers target you, you’ll be ready to push back and protect your digital territory.