{"id":24108,"date":"2025-05-21T21:52:33","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T17:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/cyber-resilience-101\/24108\/"},"modified":"2025-05-21T21:52:33","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T17:52:33","slug":"cyber-resilience-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/cyber-resilience-101\/24108\/","title":{"rendered":"The ABCs of cyber-resilience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Attacks on corporate IT infrastructure\u00a0\u2014 especially using ransomware\u00a0\u2014 and other cyber incidents are increasingly topping the list<\/a>s of risks to business continuity. More importantly, they\u2019ve caught the attention of management, who now ask not \u201cMight we be attacked?\u201d but \u201cWhat will we do when we\u2019re attacked?\u201d As a result, many companies are striving to develop cyber-resilience.<\/p>\n

The World Economic Forum (WEF) defines cyber-resilience<\/a> as an organization\u2019s ability to minimize the impact of significant cyber incidents on its primary business goals and objectives. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) refines this<\/a>: cyber-resilience is the ability to anticipate, withstand, recover from, and adapt to adverse conditions, attacks, or compromises of cyber systems.<\/p>\n

Everyone agrees today\u2019s companies need cyber-resilience\u00a0\u2014 but actually implementing a cyber-resilience strategy presents many challenges. According to a Cohesity survey<\/a> of 3100 IT and cybersecurity leaders, 98% of surveyed companies aim to be able to recover from a cyberattack within 24 hours, while only 2% can actually meet that goal. In reality, 80% of businesses need between four days and\u2026 three weeks to recover.<\/p>\n

The seven pillars of cyber-resilience<\/h2>\n

In its Cyber-Resilience Compass<\/a> whitepaper, the WEF identifies the following key components of a strategy:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Leadership<\/strong>: embedding cyber-resilience into the company\u2019s strategic goals; communicating clearly with teams about its importance; defining company-wide tolerance levels for major cyber-risks; empowering those responsible for designing and (if necessary) executing rapid response scenarios.<\/li>\n
  2. Governance, risk, and compliance<\/strong>: defining a risk profile; assigning clear responsibilities for specific risks; planning and implementing risk mitigation measures; ensuring regulatory compliance.<\/li>\n
  3. People and culture<\/strong>: developing cybersecurity skills; tailoring security awareness training to each employee\u2019s role; hiring staff with the right cybersecurity skills; creating a safe environment where employees can report incidents and mistakes without fear.<\/li>\n
  4. Business processes<\/strong>: prioritizing IT services based on their importance to business continuity; preparing for worst-case scenarios and fostering adaptability. This includes planning in detail how critical processes will function in the event of large-scale IT failures.<\/li>\n
  5. Technical systems<\/strong>: developing and regularly updating system-specific protection measures. For example, secure configurations (hardening), redundancy, network micro-segmentation, multi-factor authentication (MFA), tamper-proof backups, log management. The level of protection and allocated resources must be proportionate to the system\u2019s importance.
    \nFor timely and effective threat response, it\u2019s essential to implement systems that combine detailed infrastructure monitoring with semi-automated response:     XDR<\/a>, +SOAR, or similar tools.<\/li>\n
  6. Crisis management<\/strong>: building incident response teams; improving recovery plans; designating decision-makers in the event of a crisis; preparing backup communication channels (for example, if corporate email and instant messengers are unavailable); developing external communications strategies.<\/li>\n
  7. Ecosystem engagement<\/strong>: collaborating with supply-chain partners, regulators, and competitors to raise collective resilience.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Stages of cyber-resilience implementation<\/h2>\n

    The same Cohesity survey reveals that most companies feel they are midway on the road to cyber-resilience, with many having implemented some of the necessary basic technical and organizational measures.<\/p>\n

    Most commonly implemented:<\/p>\n