Top 4 Tips for cyber resilience best practices

If you want to protect your organization from the negative impact of cyberattacks and data breaches, you need to implement strong cyber resilience best practices. The top 4 tips for cyber resilience best practices aim to help organizations build a responsive and agile cybersecurity framework that prepares them to respond to potential cyber risks and attacks. With the right balance between people, processes, and technology, these practices ensure that businesses can function properly even after a cyberattack. In this article, we will explore the top 4 tips for cyber resilience best practices to help you stay vigilant against potential cyber threats.

Explanation of cyber resilience and its importance

Cyber resilience refers to an organization’s ability to withstand, recover from, and adapt to adverse cyber conditions such as security incidents and cyber-attacks. It is becoming increasingly important in today’s digital age as cyber threats continue to evolve. Cyber resilience is not just about protecting the organization; it also focuses on limiting the impact of security incidents through the deployment of appropriate security tools and processes. By achieving cyber resilience, organizations can maintain the continuity of their business operations, improve compliance with regulations, and gain trust from customers, partners, and vendors. Thus, enhancing cyber resilience should be a top priority for all businesses in this digital world. [1][2]

Brief overview of the top 4 cyber resilience best practices

To achieve cyber resilience, it’s crucial to strike a balance between people, processes, and technology. This means having the right governance and strong processes in place, as well as collaborating with both internal and external parties to gather intelligence and assess security measures. It also involves identifying and prioritizing top risks, and protecting digital crown jewels by prioritizing critical assets and systems. Additionally, an active-defense posture using SIEMs and anomaly-defense systems, threat modeling, and real-time detection, and the use of third-party threat intelligence resources are all key elements to consider. Ultimately, cyber resilience is a continuous, iterative process that requires ongoing attention and a balanced approach. [3][4]

1. Align cybersecurity priorities with business-value supply chains

Explanation of conflicting agendas among different business units

One major challenge to implementing effective cyber resilience practices is the existence of conflicting agendas among different business units. For example, the IT department may prioritize the security of digital assets, while the marketing department may prioritize ease of use for customers. It’s important for executives to identify these conflicting agendas and find ways to prioritize cyber resilience across all departments. All stakeholders must be aware of and agree upon clear guidelines and policies for cyber risk management in order for this to happen regularly between various teams. By fostering a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility, organizations can better protect themselves from cyber threats. [5][6]

Importance of identifying and prioritizing top risks

Identifying and prioritizing the top risks is crucial for a successful cyber resilience strategy. By understanding the biggest threats to your organization’s digital assets, you can focus your resources and efforts to protect them. This also enables you to allocate your cybersecurity budget more effectively, making sure you’re investing in the areas that matter most. Additionally, by prioritizing your top risks, you can collaborate with interdisciplinary teams to build a more comprehensive cybersecurity plan that addresses all angles of the issue. Knowing what you need to protect allows you to take the necessary steps to minimize the impact of potential cyberattacks and mitigate risk. [7][8]

Collaboration with interdisciplinary teams

Collaboration with interdisciplinary teams is crucial to ensuring cyber resilience. It enables businesses to identify and prioritize top risks, protect their most critical systems and assets, and ultimately engage and deflect attackers effectively. Often, different business units may have conflicting agendas, making collaboration difficult. However, security teams should work with an interdisciplinary team to consider security problems from the standpoint of enabling the business. By doing so, cybersecurity priorities can align with business value chains, and the entire enterprise can be considered to prioritize protection for critical assets. It is only by working together that businesses can achieve a balanced approach between [9][10]

Protect your organization with the top 5 cyber resilience best practices. Learn how to prepare and prevent cyber threats.

Criteria for identifying the most critical systems and assets

When it comes to identifying the most critical systems and assets, there are several criteria that can be used.

1. Essentiality: The first criterion is whether the system or asset is essential for the operation of the organization. If a system or asset is critical to maintaining business operations, then it should be identified as a critical asset.

2. Impact: The second criterion is the impact that the loss of the system or asset would have on the organization. If the loss of a system or asset would have a significant impact on the organization’s ability to operate, then it should be identified as a critical asset.

3. Vulnerability: The third criterion is the vulnerability of the system or asset. If a system or asset is vulnerable to attack or failure, then it should be identified as a critical asset.

4. Cost: The fourth criterion is the cost of replacing or repairing the system or asset. If the cost of replacing or repairing a system or asset is high, then it should be identified as a critical asset.

5. Regulatory compliance: The fifth criterion is whether the system or asset is required for regulatory compliance. If a system or asset is required by regulation, then it should be identified as a critical asset.

By using these criteria, organizations can identify their most critical systems and assets and focus their resources on protecting them from potential threats.

What are the 5 pillars of cyber resilience?

The 5 pillars of cyber resilience can be best thought of as a framework with five key aspects that must be aligned to combat cyber threats effectively. These pillars are:

1. Prepare/Identify
The first pillar is all about developing an organizational understanding of how to manage cybersecurity risk to systems, people, assets, data, and capabilities. This involves identifying physical and software assets within the organization to establish the basis of an Asset Management program, identifying cybersecurity policies and legal and regulatory requirements regarding cybersecurity capabilities, and identifying asset vulnerabilities and threats as a basis for Risk Assessment.

2. Protect
The Protect pillar outlines appropriate safeguards to ensure the delivery of critical infrastructure services. It is important to establish data security protection consistent with the organization’s risk strategy to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information. This pillar also includes managing protective technology to ensure the security and resilience of systems and assets consistent with organizational policies, procedures, and agreements.

3. Detect
The Detect pillar defines the appropriate activities to identify the occurrence of a cybersecurity event. It’s important to implement Security Continuous Monitoring capabilities to monitor cybersecurity events and verify the effectiveness of protective measures, including network and physical activities.

4. Respond
The Respond pillar includes appropriate activities to take action regarding a detected cybersecurity incident. This includes ensuring response planning processes are executed during and after an incident, managing communications during and after an event with stakeholders, law enforcement, external stakeholders as appropriate, and conducting analysis to ensure effective response and support recovery activities.

5. Recover
The Recover pillar identifies appropriate activities to maintain plans for resilience and to restore any capabilities or services that were impaired due to a cybersecurity incident. The organization implements Improvement by incorporating lessons learned from current and previous detection/response activities.

Overall, these five pillars are the highest level of abstraction included in the Cybersecurity Framework and they represent the five primary pillars required for a successful and holistic cybersecurity program. It’s important to understand the business context and related cybersecurity risks to enable an organization to focus and prioritize its efforts consistent with its risk management strategy and business needs. [1][2]

Prioritizing cyber risks on an enterprise-wide basis

It’s essential for organizations to prioritize their cyber risks on an enterprise-wide basis. With the increasing prevalence of cyberattacks, it’s crucial to identify the most critical systems and assets that are vulnerable to such threats. This will allow companies to develop a comprehensive approach to cyber resilience and allocate resources to address the most significant risks. Attacker profiling can also help identify gaps and weak points in a company’s security infrastructure. Third-party threat intelligence resources and machine learning analytics can facilitate more effective threat modeling and detection of known attacks. Ultimately, a balance between people, processes, and technology is necessary to ensure continuous iteration and improvement in cyber risk management. [15][16]

3. Conduct intelligence gathering to determine attacker motives

Role of attacker profiling in identifying gaps and weak points

Attacker profiling involves assessing the motives, methods, and tactics of potential attackers in order to identify gaps and weak points in a company’s cybersecurity defenses. By understanding the mindset of attackers, businesses can better anticipate the ways in which their systems and data may be targeted, and take proactive measures to strengthen their security posture. This is an important aspect of cyber resilience, as it allows companies to stay one step ahead of cybercriminals and reduce their risk of a successful attack. Effective attacker profiling involves a combination of human intelligence and machine learning tools, as well as collaboration between interdisciplinary teams. [17][18]

Use of third-party threat intelligence resources

Another key aspect of cyber resilience is the use of third-party threat intelligence resources. These resources can provide a wider view of potential threats and can monitor a range of sources that individual businesses may not have access to. Bringing in security consultants or partnering with third-party specialists can provide valuable insights and a second set of eyes to assess potential risks. In addition, the combination of threat intelligence, machine learning, and analytics resources within the IT function can help organizations engage and deflect attackers in real-time. It’s important for businesses to recognize the value of these external resources and to collaborate with them to strengthen their cyber resilience strategy. [19][20]

Combining threat intelligence, machine learning, and analytics resources to engage and deflect attackers

Combining threat intelligence, machine learning, and analytics resources is a powerful method to engage and deflect attackers. By leveraging these capabilities, companies can detect and prioritize cyber threats based on their criticality and likelihood of being attacked. Threat intelligence provides insights into attackers’ motives and tactics, while machine learning and analytics can be used to identify patterns and anomalies that may indicate an attack. By integrating these resources into their cybersecurity strategy, companies can better protect their digital assets and respond quickly to incidents, thus increasing their overall cyber resilience [21][22]

4. Create a cybersecurity capability to support resilience

Threat modeling and real-time detection of known attacks

Threat modeling is a critical aspect of cyber resilience. It involves the creation of profiles for potential attackers, the identification of their goals and methods, and the cataloging of potential threats that may arise. By analyzing the system and identifying weak points, organizations can take proactive measures to prevent attacks. Real-time threat detection is equally vital to preventing successful attacks. Using frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK can provide a reference model for measuring the effectiveness of the organization’s detection strategy. Anomaly-detection models, leveraging SIEMs and anomaly-defense systems, can provide comprehensive threat detection and allow for an active-defense posture. [23][24]

Active-defense posture using SIEMs and anomaly-defense systems

An active-defense posture using Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems and anomaly-defense systems can greatly enhance cyber resilience. SIEM systems collect and aggregate security-related data from various sources to provide real-time analysis and alerting of security events. By analyzing this data, they can identify and respond to anomalous behavior that may indicate an ongoing attack.

Anomaly-defense systems, on the other hand, use machine learning algorithms to identify patterns in network traffic that may indicate a security breach. When used together, they provide a powerful defense against cyber threats and can greatly reduce the impact of successful attacks. Another approach to use is a SOC Security Operation Center, some even call it a SOCaaS or SOC as a service.  Sentree Systems offer a SOCaaS and it is worth checking out.  If you want to monitor your entire environment and do not have the budget and expertise, a SOCaaS is the way to go over a in-house XDR or EDR.  [25][26]

MDR for small businesses

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is a crucial component of cybersecurity for small businesses. MDR services provide small businesses with the capability to detect and respond to cyber threats in real-time, greatly enhancing their overall security posture.

One aspect of MDR that can be particularly useful for small businesses is the use of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems and anomaly-defense systems. SIEM systems collect and analyze security-related data from various sources to provide real-time analysis and alerting of security events. This allows small businesses to quickly identify and respond to any suspicious or anomalous behavior that may indicate a cyber attack.

Anomaly-defense systems, on the other hand, utilize machine learning algorithms to identify patterns in network traffic that may indicate a security breach. By leveraging these systems, small businesses can proactively detect and mitigate potential threats before they cause significant damage.

In addition to SIEM systems and anomaly-defense systems, another approach that small businesses can consider is utilizing a Security Operations Center (SOC), sometimes referred to as SOC-as-a-Service (SOCaaS). A SOC provides a centralized location where security events and incidents can be monitored, analyzed, and responded to effectively. Small businesses without the necessary budget and expertise for an in-house Extended Detection and Response (XDR) or Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solution can benefit from a SOCaaS, which offers comprehensive monitoring and incident response capabilities.

If you are a small business and want to ensure the security of your entire environment, it is recommended to explore MDR services, such as the SOCaaS offering from Sentree Systems. By leveraging MDR, small businesses can significantly enhance their cybersecurity defenses and effectively protect their valuable digital assets.

Conclusion

Recap of the top 4 cyber resilience best practices

To recap, the top four cyber resilience best practices include identifying and prioritizing top risks, collaborating with interdisciplinary teams, protecting digital crown jewels, utilizing threat intelligence resources, and adopting an active-defense posture. It’s important to take a balanced approach between people, processes, and technology to achieve cyber resilience and continuously iterate and adjust as needed.

Boards should take ownership of the cyber strategy and ensure it’s reviewed regularly. Cybersecurity governance should be aligned with the organization’s overall governance framework, and cybersecurity risk management should be intelligence-led. Third-party risk management is also crucial in today’s outsourcing and cloud-based service landscape. [27][28]

Importance of continuous iteration and a balanced approach between people, processes, and technology.

To achieve cyber resilience, it is important to maintain a balanced approach between people, processes, and technology. This means not only relying on technological tools and ignoring the importance of trained personnel and well-designed processes, but also integrating all three components of cyber resilience in a complementary way without gaps. The right governance and processes play an important role in achieving cyber resilience. However, this is not a one-time thing; it’s a continuous, iterative process that requires constant scrutiny across the organization to continuously recover from an attack. Continuous iteration and a balanced approach are critical elements for long-term cyber resilience. [29][30]

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