What are the most effective disaster recovery and business continuity practices for cyberattacks?

Identify critical assets, evaluate potential threats, and gauge vulnerabilities. Prioritize safeguards based on impact and likelihood, implementing robust cybersecurity measures. Regularly update and test your disaster recovery plan, ensuring swift response and minimal downtime. Collaborate with cybersecurity experts and stay informed about evolving threats to adapt your strategies.

Defense of your assets is what most organizations focus on, which is good, but is it good enough when a cyber attack penetrates the castle walls. We need a good containment, backup and recovery strategy, because its not an IF we are going to be attacked its a WHEN. Backup assets that have the biggests impact on your organization if they are lost. It does not matter how they are lost, they just are. How will you recover them, where and how quickly? Are your backups protected better than the original data? Can you recover the data quick enough to be effective? The most effective DR/BC practice is to involve business process/data owners every step of the way, without their cooperation, recovery to Business as Usual (BAU) is not likely.

Cyber is now a board conversation. We are moving away from Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity (BC) to one of Resilience. The Business Impact Analysis (BIA), sometimes called a Business Impact Assessment (BIA), sets the priorities and the metrics.

For me the best defense is a combination of strong back-up/recovery and segmentation prospect as well as strong internal processes and monitoring. Keeping up with the threats is key and practice of the response by the CERT team (provided you have one) is essential. There are specific steps you must take when the coast is calm to be ready for the storm. It is not matter of getting hit but matter of what happens next that matters. Happy to chat offline.

Conduct a Business Impact Analysis to identify all your critical operations which need protection and can impact the business. Than evaluate the control effectiveness based on the BIA which can impact the continuity of these critical operations so that you can work on these risks to improve your resilience

Begin with comprehensive employee training on cybersecurity best practices to mitigate human error. Employ robust firewalls, antivirus software, and intrusion detection systems to fortify your network. Regularly update and patch software to address vulnerabilities promptly. Encrypt sensitive data and enforce strong access controls. Conduct regular security audits and penetration testing to identify and rectify weaknesses. Foster a culture of security awareness and ensure a swift incident response plan is in place.

Create a realtime visibility of control effectiveness and make sure we maintain the lifecycle of these solutions i.e. basics like patch management, vulnerability assessment, configuration hardening, access control, etc.

Recent years have taught us focusing on technical measures is not sufficient. The bad actors have figured this out, exploiting the people, process, and organizational dimensions. North of 80% of attacks focus on the human element, often called social engineering. Recent years have also taught us we cannot rely solely on technical measures. We need to detect faster and recover quicker.

Use data encryption, secure user portals, 2 factor authentication, sandbox protection, DDoS protection, update software to fix vulnerabilities, and have an alternative site.

?????????????????? ???????????????????? ????????????????: ? System patching, configuration hardening and tech refresh to eliminate known vulnerability vectors. ? Data protection via access controls, encryption and data loss prevention controls, on-premises and in the cloud. ? HR screening procedures for employees, vendors and third parties accessing sensitive assets. ? Email filtering, web controls, endpoint protection and firewalls to prevent malware or ransomware entry and propagation. ? Privileged access management via least-privilege and just-in-time access controls along with multi-factor authentication. ? Security monitoring via endpoint detection, security information and event management tools allied with threat intelligence.

Don't document but establish a DR plan in a manner that will help you move to this plan during a real disaster. Just think if there are frequent flood in your area impact food supply than you must maintain the food supply include drinking water availability which you can use during these days of disaster and not keep it in a place which gets impacted immediately and make sure all the members of house are aware of the same.

Start by defining clear roles and responsibilities within your response team. Establish communication protocols to ensure swift and accurate information dissemination. Create detailed incident response procedures, outlining steps for identification, containment, eradication, recovery, and lessons learned. Regularly test the plan through simulations and updates based on emerging threats. Foster collaboration with relevant stakeholders, law enforcement, and cybersecurity experts.

Risk Assessment and Planning: Identify specific risks associated with cyberattacks. Regular Testing: Perform regular backups of critical data.

A response plan is critical. Incident response plans often focus on the technical aspects, run by the technical folks. In practice, the business aspects are just as important. Many incident response plans focus on the events that get the most headlines, like ransomware. They often forget about DDoS attacks, Intellectual Property (IP) theft, and the Insider Threat.

Conduct simulated exercises to assess the plan's effectiveness, identifying strengths and weaknesses. Integrate feedback from stakeholders and participants to refine response procedures. Stay abreast of evolving cyber threats, updating the plan accordingly to address emerging risks. Collaborate with cybersecurity experts to incorporate the latest defense strategies. Ensure that all employees are familiar with the revised plan through ongoing training. Establish a routine schedule for plan reviews and exercises to maintain adaptability and readiness, strengthening your organization's resilience against cyber threats over time.

Practice, practice, practice. Learn, adapt, and practice some more. When an incident happens, it is a crazy time. No incident will be exactly what you anticipated. The more muscle memory you develop, the better you deal with the deltas. Ultimately, it will cost you less, get resolved faster, and prevent burning out your team.

Testing is very important as the situations change, environment change every time. Hence in order to keep the plan upto date keep testing, document learnings, and update the plan every now and then. Once we update the plan its very important to communicate to all the stakeholders who need to know.

Actual incidents is the real testament of all the plannings we have been doing. Organizations must have a process to document the incident management documentation to learn and evolve from the same. Its like we have been doing all the workouts and building immunity for our bodies. However when we are sick, thats the actual test of all the training and healthy lifestyle we adopt. After every sickness we need to evolve as the body dynamics change after every sickness and you have to adopt based on the updated situation.

It is also critical that post-Incident review improvement plans align with the right accountable owner, at the right level. Best case is those improvements influence scope and priority of existing enterprise plans, or fit neatly into one or more (ITIL) Problems if small enough (ie. permanent or risk reducing fixes to a specific root cause). If not, improvements that are “bigger than a breadbox” or have no apparent sponsor/owner are a signal for needing special attention, planning, and prioritization at higher levels to get sufficiently addressed.

Analyze the incident thoroughly, identifying root causes and assessing the effectiveness of response strategies. Document lessons learned and update the response plan accordingly, incorporating insights to enhance future resilience. Foster a culture of continuous improvement, encouraging open communication among response teams. Conduct regular debriefings to gather feedback and refine procedures. Share findings across the organization to bolster collective awareness and preparedness.

Please find below my view. 1. Incident Reporting and documentation 2. Cybersecurity Policy 3. Awareness and traning about cybersecurity

???????????????? ?????? ?????????? ???????? ??????????????????: ? Complete incident documentation capturing timeline, vulnerabilities exploited, containment measures, financial impacts and remediation steps. ? Forensic analysis to determine root causes, lapses that enabled the attack, and why detection or response components underperformed. ? Updated threat intelligence based on tactics, techniques and procedures used by attackers for more effective monitoring. ? Quantified data on recovery times, productivity impacts and direct costs for security investment justification. ? Action plans to address gaps identified during post-mortems through security enhancements, policy updates or plan modifications.

Resilience is about addressing not only technical aspects but the people, process, and organization aspects as well through the entire life cycle of protection, detection, and recovery. In this ever-connected world, we need to look at the third parties that can affect us and our impact on others.

Foster a cybersecurity-aware culture through regular employee training. Implement robust preventive measures, including firewalls, encryption, and access controls. Regularly test and update your disaster recovery plan, incorporating feedback and staying current with emerging threats. Establish clear communication protocols and response procedures, ensuring swift and coordinated actions. Collaborate with cybersecurity experts and leverage threat intelligence for proactive defense. Learn from incidents through thorough post-event evaluations, refining strategies.

Keep enhancing your security posture. This can be achieved by learnings from past incidents, other incidents outside organizations. Vulnerability assessment and training of team.

?????????????? ???????? ????????????????????: In order to enhancing our resilience, we have to focus on: ? Cross-team coordination to align cyber resilience goals amidst digital innovation priorities that introduce new vulnerabilities. ? Business continuity management expanding redundancies or failovers to mitigate downtime from localized outages or destruction. ? Risk management functions continuously evaluating exposures from new assets, technologies or threats. ? Updated regulatory and legal compliance capabilities as disclosure rules expand for breached entities. ? Mature security capabilities maintaining robust defensive postures against prevalent attack types based on threat landscape.

Site loss recovery is not the same as cyber event recovery (Ransomware). Similar to the fact that moving the cloud to obtain high availability is not the same as recoverability of data in the cloud. Form a resiliency team, give them the authority to ask the tough questions, listen to their findings and then do something to reduce the risk. What is more critical to restore, the customer data, or the network authentication and authorization services when both are gone? A good resiliency team will help identify the gaps in your organization's resiliency capabilities.

You’re right Cliff - Backup and disaster recovery is not the same as cyber recovery. It’s why it’s so critical to have the right tool that can simply handle both.

A?adir mas pasos lo volverá tedioso, las mejores prácticas nos brindan lineamientos pero siempre debemos adaptarlos a nuestras realidades y músculo financiero, sin que por ello nuestros planes corran el riesgo de no ser efectivos

To fortify your organization against cyber threats, a comprehensive approach encompassing technical and strategic measures is essential. Here's a succinct summary of key practices for enhancing disaster recovery and business continuity in the face of cyberattacks: 1. **Communication Protocols:** - Establish clear channels for timely information dissemination to internal and external stakeholders. - Utilize various tools, such as email and social media, to maintain effective communication during a cyberattack. 2. **Collaboration with External Partners:** - Forge partnerships with cybersecurity, legal, and PR experts to navigate recovery and brand protection effectively.