How to Build Cyber Resilience to Ensure Continuity

What Is Cyber Resilience?

Cyber resilience describes your organization’s ability to prevent, respond to, and recover from cybersecurity threats or incidents.

Cyberthreats, including phishing, ransomware, hacking, cloud breaches, and third-party vulnerabilities, can expose your organization’s sensitive data, deplete your contingency funds, and damage your reputation. In fact, the global average cost of a data breach is a staggering 4.4 million.

The proliferation of these threats, paired with evolving technology that requires your organization to constantly adapt, underscores the need for seamless collaboration between cybersecurity and continuity teams.

How Cyber Resilience Empowers Continuity

Cyber resilience is a core facet of your organization’s Business Continuity (BC) or Continuity of Operations (COOP) capabilities. You need proactive safeguards and a plan if a cyberattack occurs—otherwise, you jeopardize your entire operation, whether you’re a government agency, a private corporation, a utility operation, or any other organization.

Cyber Resilience and BC Teams

To ensure preparedness, BC teams need an in-depth understanding of the organization’s technological landscape. A critical challenge here is closing the divide between IT and continuity teams; many organizations lack a complete, current, or accurate inventory of critical technology systems.

This gap presents an opportunity for stronger collaboration. By working together on a Business Impact Analysis (BIA), BC and IT teams can identify crucial systems and dependencies across the organization, making it easier to maintain an updated and accessible system inventory.

Cyber Resilience for COOP

Data breaches in the public sector can have disastrous consequences, from endangering highly sensitive data to spreading misinformation to undermining constituents’ confidence in your institution. For example, a cyberattack on an election could call the legitimacy of the results into question.

With stakes this high, many organizations abide by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). FedRAMP is a government-wide program promoting secure cloud services through its standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring. Ensure your organization takes steps to protect its data in accordance with its FedRAMP authorization level.

For government organizations, securing cyber resilience requires consistent collaboration and streamlined data-sharing to accurately identify and mitigate threats. Finding a system with FedRAMP High authorization—the gold standard for data security—also provides peace of mind for government agencies.

Building a Foundation for Cyber Resilience

A proactive approach to managing disruptions involves answering these questions:

• Are there any critical systems that IT might not be aware of? Gaps in visibility can hinder timely responses to disruptions. For example, blind spots in a cloud environment could prevent IT teams from noticing where data moves between cloud systems, SaaS, and unmanaged devices.

• What is the established Service Level Agreement (SLA) with critical vendors, and how does it impact business processes? An SLA is a contract between your organization and your vendors that describes expectations for uptime, performance metrics, and responsibilities. Identifying gaps between what your vendor will provide and your organization’s Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) — that is, the amount of data you’re prepared to lose in an event — can help you strategize before an incident occurs.

• Who is responsible for vendor communication during outages? There is a growing disconnect on who owns the vendor relationship. According to a recent security report, 50% of respondents said communication falls to the business owner, 34% shared ownership with IT, and 15% said ownership fell entirely to IT. Have the conversation now and not after a disruption has occurred.

When planning for cyberattacks, close collaboration is key. IT teams often prioritize recovery based on user numbers, but this doesn’t always align with your organization’s critical functions. By integrating continuity and DR priorities, cybersecurity teams can help ensure that recovery efforts focus on what is truly essential for continuity.

Core Components of an Incident Response Plan for Cyber Recovery

Once you’ve answered the foundational questions to ensure cyber resilience, you should focus on creating an effective incident response plan(IRP). An IRP is a written document that your organization uses to prevent, identify, withstand, and recover from cyberattacks. Your team will follow your IRP’s procedures to contain the threat, accelerate recovery time, and avoid costs.

The core elements of an IRP include:

• Preparation: Your IRP will describe who the members of your incident response team will be and define clear procedures for your team to follow in case of an emergency. Your cybersecurity and IT teams should conduct regular simulations to prepare both teams for real-world incidents.

• Detection: To accurately identify a cyberattack, you need to understand your organization’s baseline network traffic and system and user behaviors so you can spot any irregularities. Use tools such as intrusion detection systems (IDSs) or security information and event management systems (SIEMs) to flag suspicious activity.

• Containment: Align your internal team with your vendor to discuss appropriate containment strategies for various types of cyberattacks. You’ll need both short-term and long-term plans to minimize damage and prevent the issue from escalating.

• Eradication: Once you’ve contained the problem, you’ll need to address its root cause. Remove any malware and enhance defenses on weak areas. During the incident, you should also follow a clear, predefined communication strategy to keep key stakeholders informed.

• Recovery: Full recovery may take hours or weeks of resolving various issues and re-testing your system’s functionality.

• Review: After a cyberattack, your team should re-group to discuss what went wrong, what your response process did well, and how you can avoid similar problems in the future. Document each incident carefully to enhance your organization’s ability to respond effectively.

A well-defined incident response strategy is essential for minimizing the impact of cyber incidents and ensuring continuity. Cybersecurity teams must coordinate closely with continuity teams to create a unified IRP that aligns immediate crisis management actions with long-term recovery goals.

Also, note that the best IRPs evolve along with your nonprofit and the general technology landscape. Regularly iterate your IRP over time to enhance your ability to prevent and recover from cybersecurity incidents.

How Juvare Empowers Cyber Resilience

Protecting your organization from cyberattacks requires comprehensive emergency management solutions that address both physical and digital threats. At Juvare, we provide a wide range of tools and platforms to help private and public-sector organizations prevent, withstand, and respond to cyber incidents.

Our software solutions enable seamless coordination and real-time communication among emergency management teams, ensuring that the response to any cyber incident is swift and efficient. Find the right solution for your needs:

• WebEOC, Juvare’s continuity software: Private corporations and government agencies alike use WebEOC to enhance real-time situational awareness and decision-making. In the event of a cyberattack, WebEOC helps you quickly mobilize response efforts and coordinate across multiple departments. The platform’s centralized dashboard ensures that all stakeholders can access critical information and respond in a unified manner, enabling a faster recovery.

• Crisis Track, Juvare’s damage assessment toolkit: Crisis Track’s disaster recovery capabilities extend to managing the aftermath of cyberattacks. After a breach, use Crisis Track to monitor damage to physical infrastructure as well as data integrity and operational impact. Crisis Track’s automated workflows and reporting tools allow organizations to quickly evaluate their situation and take the necessary steps toward recovery.

• UCP, Juvare’s federal government management software: Juvare’s United Command Platform (UCP) offers a real-time common operating picture across all domains, including land, air, sea, space, and cyber. Feel confident collaborating with key stakeholders with our FedRAMP High-certified tech.