Until it happens to you, not too many individuals realize just how devastating it is to a business to be hacked. According to a recent study, it is estimated that up to 60% of enterprises will go out of business six months after they have been hacked. Thus, it is important to ensure that your business is able to survive such a cyberattack. This is called cyber resilience, and there are at least five steps to doing this right:
Be aware of your assets and supply chain.
The first step is to be aware of your assets and your supply chain. First of all, your supply consists of such things as organizations that are paired with a virtual network. In order to appropriately manage a supply chain, you need to do such things as access, identify, and analyze large amounts of data throughout the different information technology sources and platforms. Of course, along with this you will also need to be aware of your assets and know what types you have. Generally, you also not only need to know the types of data but also where it is stored.
Practice good maintenance.
Another way to be cyber resilient is to practice solid maintenance strategies. Doing such things as continually monitoring for a threat and being on the lookout for several categories of important information. Being mindful of such things as the continuity of your operations and controls, your organizational risk management, your authentication controls and user provisioning, and your environmental security controls and your data center physical controls.
Keep all of your systems up-to-date and assign the appropriate access privileges.
Another hallmark of cyber resilience would be making sure that not everyone has access to your systems. First of all, you only want individuals with the appropriate experience with data systems because there is no room for error when it comes to preventing hacking. Additionally, having up-to-date systems will make it harder for hackers to attempt to get into your system.
Plan your recovery.
Ideally, the main thing you are looking for here is to have safeguards in place that will allow your business to go through a cyber attack and recover without skipping a beat. This starts by having corrective controls which will offer solutions to help businesses continue even in the event of an otherwise devastating cyber attack.
Ideally, another part of the recovery would consist of having appropriate corrective controls in place as well. This is especially important for financial institutions and other enterprises that deal with funds that belong to other people.
Conduct disaster drills.
If your organization conducts fire drills or plans for an active shooter situation then they should also be prepared if a data incident occurs. The good news is that there is an organized process for doing this. Consider the following steps:
Start formatting your incident response plan.
The best way to sum it up is that you have to start somewhere. Your incident response plan should contain things such as the strategy for identifying the attack, the methods that will be used for containing the damage, and also a method for eradicating the root cause. Once your organization responds to an incident quickly, you will be able to reduce losses, restore services and processes, and mitigate some of the damage.
The first step is to engage in preparation. Thus, you would do such things as creating an incident response team and make an outline of what their roles and responsibilities might be. You would also want to develop guidelines that they can implement in the event of a cyber attack. Alert them to what the communication plan is as well.
The next step would be identification, which is where a team decides what criteria would call them into action. For example, if there is a phishing attack, the team will assess the evidence and determine the next steps. The step immediately following this would be containment, in which the corresponding team will work to mitigate the damage. They will also install some security patches if necessary.
The final steps would be eradication and recovery. The team will keep the threat fully contained and make sure that all of the systems are back to their original state. In the recovery stage, the affected systems should no longer be in danger any longer and they can be restored to a working condition. A solid team will also monitor the network system to make sure that another incident is kept at bay.
If you keep these procedures in mind, you are sure to have a system fully protected from a cyber attack.
