Cyber Resilience
Cyber resilience, a combination of business continuity, IT security and organizational resilience, goes beyond cyber security. It is designed to bolster an organization's defenses so damage from a cyber attack -- which now is a case of when rather than if -- can be minimized.
As such, a cyber resilience strategy includes disaster recovery and continuity measures. These might include disaster recovery locations, remote working to ensure businesses can function when staff can't get to central locations, and other frameworks that go beyond cyber.
Since time is of the essence, cyber resilience strategies contain a strong element of automation through machine learning, integrated frameworks that combine security measures with continuity protocols, PR and training.
In terms of non-cyber risks, the top three mentioned were global political instability, inflationary pressures, skills shortages and regulatory changes.
Cyber Threats
Asked about the types of novel cyber threats they were most concerned about; the top one has only risen up the agenda very recently: voice and image theft for production of deep fakes for phishing and scams. There was also concern about AI-enabled misinformation and disinformation (34 percent) and mal-information (information based on reality but which is weaponized to inflict harm on a person, organization or country; 28 percent).
Respondents mentioned concerns about existing dangers becoming worse. Top of these were an escalation of ransomware attacks (30 percent). This could mean new threat actors, new malware strains or new tactics by cyber gangs, such as a widening of the affiliation model.
Supply chain attacks (23 percent) were another cause for concern. Supply chain attacks are extremely hard to defend against as they come through an organization's partners or the software it uses. Related to this, 28 percent said they were concerned about IoT attacks launched via the ever-increasing number of connected devices.
A focus on cyber resilience was the main defensive strategy chosen (33 percent), closely followed by an emphasis on communicating risk to employees and mandating multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Zero-trust network access (ZTNA) was the most widely mentioned technical solution. ZTNA assumes the threat actor is already within the walls.
A few were sufficiently worried about quantum computers as to be considering replacing vulnerable cryptosystems such as RSA and elliptic curve.
