Beyond Vulnerabilities: Why enhancing Cyber resilience is the way forward

Trends shaping the future

Despite the growing concern around maintaining cyber resilience, the pressure to deliver digital transformation at speed has led organizations, especially in the government and public sector, to bypass cybersecurity processes. At their core, all government and public sector organizations function based on trust. To win and maintain the trust of citizens, such organizations have to demonstrate consistent dedication in preserving confidentiality, confirming the availability of systems and services, and maintaining the integrity of data.

It is not possible to escape from cyber warfare in today’s world. Global instability, political tension, or even cyber-attacks in general, oblige countries to reconsider their international strategies and include cyber security as a security against cyber-attacks which may otherwise have catastrophic effects in vital sectors.

In April 2022, another major cyberattack was reported in Costa Rica, where hackers breached the Finance? Ministry and paralyzed the ministry's network, demanding a ransom of $10M to return access to the government (Reed, 2022). The Colonial Pipeline, an American oil pipeline system originating in Houston, Texas is another example; it suffered from a ransomware attack in May 2021. The company was responsible for about 45% of the fuel consumed by the East Coast. The cyber-attack disabled computer systems responsible for fuel production from Texas to the Northeast, which resulted in a chaotic situation involving motorists lining up to fill their tanks and jerrycans. These attacks could have more dire consequences depending on the extent and scope of the attack.

With the ever-dynamic threat landscape, traditional guidance on cybersecurity best practices may not be sufficient to address threats. This drives state authorities to conceptualize and implement regulations that would enforce implementation and operation of cybersecurity resilience to combat next generation risks. When we talk about cybersecurity resilience, we can envision an environment that facilitates a secure cyber ecosystem to include both core infrastructure and support for industries in sustaining and recovering from attacks. National cybersecurity regulatory frameworks that cover the topics of risk management and threat intelligence can help governments combat emerging threats.

A risk-based approach to cybersecurity allows organizations to focus on protecting high-value information assets and mitigating the most impactful risks, thereby reducing the attack surface. Implementing such an approach requires an integrated mechanism that considers multiple facets of an organization (e.g., types of assets, complexity of processes) and a phased methodology that covers understanding of business and technology environment, classification of technology assets, analysis of risks or threats, assessment of control design, and implementation of risk treatment options.

The fast-evolving nature of the cyber risk environment makes it increasingly important that government and public sector organizations adopt a risk-based approach to cybersecurity. Organizations simply cannot protect everything to the same degree. The first step is getting cyber governance right.

To speed the pace of their efforts, governments must not only embrace the right technologies, but also partner effectively with the private sector to accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen cybersecurity, and enhance digital trust, says Arvind Krishna, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IBM.?

Hybrid cloud allows businesses and governments to leverage the full power of cloud computing by operating safely wherever they compute.

Scaling the use of AI, can be used to unlock the value of their data and automate tasks so that their people can shift to higher-value work.

Quantum computing enables the stimulation of the behavior of matter down to the atomic level, rather than relying on mere guesswork.

These include developing more accurate climate models, accelerating drug discovery, and creating vastly more efficient batteries. Significant engineering advances are being made today to make quantum more practical tomorrow.

Cybercrime is the issue of this decade, costing billions of dollars and rising each year. Organizations are using hybrid clouds to integrate the many different security tools they use to defend themselves today. They are combining this with AI’s proven ability to analyze threat information at scale to stay safer.Governments today must support innovation while delivering the highest standards of security, privacy, data protection and compliance.

How can governments strike a balance between supporting innovation and maintaining high standards of security, privacy, data protection, and compliance?

To read the full report on Cyber Resilience Through a Risk-Based Approach click:

To read the full article on How Trusted Tech is Transforming Government click:?

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