What does cyber resilience actually involve? 

Between 2023-2024, there were 7.78 million cybercrimes of all types committed against UK businesses alone. From ransomware to phishing attacks, the risk of a security breach is always looming.  

These cybercrimes can have disastrous consequences for businesses- from sensitive data breaches to complete system outages- which can come with high financial costs and reputational damage. 

This is why cyber resilience is so vital. Cyber resilience refers to the ability to withstand, recover from, and adapt to cyber threats, minimising the detrimental impact of cyber-attacks. We cannot prevent cyber-attacks happening, but we can prevent them from knocking your organisation off course by boosting your cyber resilience. 

According to the UK government, the definition of cyber resilience is “the ability of an organisation to maintain the delivery of its key functions and services and ensure the protection of its data, despite adverse cyber security events”. 

So, what does this actually mean for businesses? 

Below, we outline five essential tips to enhance your business's cyber resilience and ensure your organisation continues to thrive in the face of cyber incidents. 

Reinforce your cyber security monitoring 

Your monitoring must be proactive- not reactive. This means you must put in place continuous 24/7 monitoring, with real-time alerts. This way you can identify and address vulnerabilities and threats before they become detrimental to your organisation. 

Managed Detection Response is an excellent way to ensure your monitoring is constant and highly attuned to any threats. This AI-powered threat detection and monitoring solution is crucial to: 

• Overcome ‘alert fatigue’, making it easier to respond to threats effectively 

• Quickly identify anomalies and threats to be dealt with 

• Gain total visibility over your networks and systems 

• Ensure you meet any industry regulations relating to compliance  

Cyber resilience isn’t just about watching for threats, it's about stress-testing your defences with unexpected failures. If your monitoring team has never been caught off guard, your system isn’t resilient yet. 

Regularly backup your data and ensure system continuity 

Data loss can have devastating consequences for any business. Whether it's due to a ransomware attack, a hardware failure, or human error, having reliable data backups is essential for quick recovery and minimal downtime. Regular backups, combined with a thorough disaster recovery plan, can significantly improve your cyber resilience. 

The backup of data can be incredibly resource-heavy, especially in large organisations, so managed backup is an excellent option to free up internal IT teams from spending their time managing these backup environments.  

By leveraging managed backup services, you can be sure your data is stored securely and is easily accessible when needed. 

For optimal resilience, adopt an ‘assumed breach’ mindset- act as though you’ve already been breached or are about to be. Allocate resources to test your backups and recovery, as well as to simulate attacks.  

Don’t forget about internal threats 

It’s easy to spend all your time protecting against external cyber threats and forget about internal threats. Internal threats can have just as much of a detrimental impact on your business as external threats. Internal threats can include:  

• Malicious action from employees 

• An employee using their personal device to log onto company systems 

• Accidentally sending the wrong information to a client or customer, compromising their data 

• Weak password practices 

Your biggest security risk isn’t a hacker, it’s trust. Every access permission is a potential entry point for cyber threats, so a Zero-Trust approach is essential. This model means that no one, either inside or outside the network, can be implicitly trusted. Every user, device, and application must be verified before being granted access to sensitive data or systems. By adopting a Zero-Trust architecture, businesses can reduce their risk of a cyber-attack by up to 90%. Plus, by using least-privilege access principles, users can only access what is necessary for them in their roles. This approach reduces the chances of both internal and external threats compromising your infrastructure. 

Continually train and educate your employees 

This is an all too overlooked aspect of cyber resilience. Human error can be the gap in the fence that cyber criminals slip through. Human error can cause data breaches and create vulnerabilities for cyber criminals to exploit; for instance, through an employee falling for a phishing email or sending a client’s personal data to the wrong recipient. By investing in cybersecurity training and raising awareness across your business, you can minimise the chances of falling victim to these attacks. 

All employees should:  

• Understand their role in cyber security and how to minimise risk 

• Know how to create secure passwords 

• Have continuous training on cyber security factored in 

• Be taught to think like hackers- if they can spot how they would exploit their own access, they’ll be less likely to fall for an attack 

Create a thorough incident response plan 

Despite putting the best precautions in place, cyberattacks are inevitable. What sets successful organisations apart is their ability to respond quickly and effectively to a breach. A well-crafted incident response (IR) plan outlines how your team should react when a cybersecurity incident occurs, ensuring minimal damage and a faster recovery. 

The most effective way to create an incident response plan is to work with true experts, as this plan must be continually tested to ensure your teams are fully prepared. Take our incident response service, for example we work with businesses to: 

• Gain instant visibility into the current cyber threat 

• Preserve digital forensic evidence 

• Promptly remove the threat from your network 

• Reduce the impact of the threat on the business 

Our Incident Response (IR) Service includes: 

• An onboarding session 

• A response retainer 

• Tabletop exercises 

• Quarterly threat intelligence and dark web scans 

It’s also crucial to establish clear roles and responsibilities for all employees, as well as clear communication protocols if required. It’s also essential to conduct a post-incident analysis to find out how to prevent these kinds of attacks from happening again in the future.  

Cyber resilience is about preventing disruption, rather than preventing attacks themselves. All measures and initiatives undertaken in the name of cyber resilience should contribute towards building an infrastructure and culture that can withstand attacks and recover quickly.  

By reinforcing your security monitoring, carrying out reliable backups, protecting against internal and external threats, committing to continuously training your staff, and having a solid incident response plan in place, you can significantly enhance your organisation's ability to adapt to and recover from cyber threats. We work closely with businesses to reinforce their systems to protect sensitive data and ensure business continuity.  

Cyber resilience isn’t about avoiding attacks- it’s about outlasting them. Attackers evolve daily. Does your strategy?  

Pressure-test your defences before attackers do and act today.