Strengthening Cyber Resiliency Through Collaboration
Fortinet News, Friday, March 22nd, 2024
According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), cyber resilience is 'the ability to anticipate, withstand, recover from, and adapt to adverse conditions, stresses, attacks, or compromises on systems that use or are enabled by cyber resources.' Resilience focuses on reducing the consequences that could be caused by a cyber incident.
The more resilient an organization is, the greater its ability to bounce back after a cyber incident or maintain mission-essential functions in a degraded environment.
Resilience denies an adversary the benefits they seek, potentially serving as a deterrent by altering their cost-benefit analysis. For a municipality or business, for example, resilience in the face of a ransomware attack provides more time and options in deciding how to respond to the attacker's demand.
To truly strengthen cyber resiliency, the federal government, state and local governments, quasi-governmental entities, and the private sector must work closely together, particularly to understand changing vectors for disruption and the potential cascading effects that a single entity may not be able to anticipate or mitigate.