Today, cyber resilience is more important than ever: it's all about your organization's ability to identify, respond to and recover swiftly from IT security incidents. Think of it as a combination of cybersecurity and operational resilience, ensuring that you can consistently anticipate, withstand, recover and adapt to attacks.
The stakes for doing this are high too: the average cost of a data breach rose to $4.88 million in 2024, a 10% increase from the previous year.1 So, it’s crucial for you to adopt robust strategies to minimize the impact of breaches.
But keep in mind, cyber resilience isn't just about restoring data; it's about addressing the root cause of disruptions, whether they come from cybercriminals, malicious insiders or system failures. This holistic approach ensures that you can restore your systems and eliminate the threats that caused the incidents in the first place.
Steps to Achieve Cyber Resilience
To build a stronger cyber resilience strategy, here are some key steps you can follow:
1. Identify Assets and Perform a Risk Assessment
Start by understanding what assets, documents and data your organization has on their network, who is responsible for what and how critical each of them is. This will allow you to make a solid assessment of the risks the organization is most likely to experience, creating the foundation of your cyber resilience plan.
2. Develop a Strategy
To ensure business operations continue with minimal disruption in the event of a cyber attack, a good response strategy is key. TD SYNNEX can help you build an incident response plan, a business continuity and resiliency plan (BCP), and even a business impact analysis (BIA) to assist.
3. Create Policies and Procedures
Everyone can benefit from a guide in a stressful situation: with the right policies and governance in place, you can make your organization’s technology (and the people who run it) the most effective parts of your cyber resilience program. That’s why it’s important to establish clear policies and procedures to guide responses to cyber incidents.
4. Implement Security Controls
Ensure your organization has the necessary security controls for cyber resilience. TD SYNNEX offers solutions such as multifactor authentication (MFA) for remote access and privileged or admin access, email filtering and web security, secured, encrypted and tested backups, privileged access management (PAM), endpoint detection and response (EDR) and patch management/vulnerability management. All these solutions in tandem can ensure your organization has the tools it needs to defend itself.
5. Deliver Training and Awareness Programs
It’s commonly known that people are the weakest link in cybersecurity, with over 90% of cyber attacks being the result of some human error.2 That’s why it’s very important to educate employees about cyber risks and promote best practices. To help you achieve this, TD SYNNEX can provide your customers and employees security awareness training to help mitigate this risk.
6. Run Simulations and Drills
Finally, when you have put together your strategy, created policies and trained your teams on best practices, it’s important that you give it all a test run. Simulate real-world incidents in a controlled environment to test your incident response, evaluate team coordination and identify any lingering vulnerabilities. TD SYNNEX can help you do this with tabletop exercises and penetration testing services that ensure your organization is prepared for any potential cyber threat.
By following these steps, you can build a robust cyber resilience strategy that not only protects your operations and data but also positions you for success in the face of ever-present cyber threats. Together, we can turn challenges into opportunities, innovate beyond expectations and build a future where your business thrives securely.
Unlocking Business Opportunities? Take a Snapshot.
The Cybersecurity Snapshot is a tool that provides a clear framework for next steps in proactive planning and recovery. It’s a streamlined five-minute survey that gauges a reseller’s maturity tier and takes a quick “snapshot” of an end-customer’s security posture. This is the first step in the process, allowing TD SYNNEX to recommend specific, personalized enablement paths for our partners – and personalized recommendations on relevant products and solutions for their end-customer.
Take the first step towards securing your IT environment by completing the Cybersecurity Snapshot. It only takes five minutes and will set you on the path to developing robust cybersecurity practices, saving money, and freeing up valuable technical resources.