Cyber Resilience

Blog Post Zero: A Framework for Cyber Resilience 101

Martin HayesLeave a comment

I’m sure at this stage that everybody is very much aware of the increased threat of ransomware based cyber-attack, and the importance of cyber security. To that end, and to the relief of all, I’m going to pleasantly surprise everybody up front, by not quoting Gartner or IDC. I think we are past having to have the industry analysts reaffirm what we already know. This is the here and now.

That said, I think it is important to call out one important emerging trend. Organisations in every industry are moving from a ‘threat prevention strategy’ to a more rounded ‘cyber resilience model’ for a holistic approach to Cyber Security. Bottom line, your organisation will be the subject of an attack. Hopefully, your threat prevention controls will be enough, alas I suspect not, and increasingly there is a tacit acceptance that prevention will never be 100% successful. This creates a problem.

More and more, the question is not ‘how did you let it happen?’ but rather ‘what did you do about it?’ All too often, even the largest organisations have struggled with an answer to the latter and have panicked in the eye of the cyber storm… too late of course at that point. Damage done or worse damage still being done whilst we look on like a helpless bystander, desperately seeking coping strategies to manage our reputation and minimise loss.

Damage limitation whilst the damage is still happening, is not a good place to be.

We are in ‘coping’ mode and certainly not in control. Again, we all know of high visibility examples of ransomware cyber-attacks, where ‘hoping for the best but expecting the worst’ are the order of the day. Fingers crossed or more accurately in the dam…

How do we shift the dial from ‘Cope and Hope’ to ‘Resilience and Control’?

Thankfully we have some very mature methodologies/frameworks that can help us develop a cohesive plan and strategy to take back control.  The ‘Five Functions’ as defined by the NIST Cybersecurity Framework is an example of a methodology which helps us both frame the problem and define a resilient solution. Perhaps a cohesive response to ‘what did you do about it?’……

Organisations need the tools and capability to ‘Detect’, ‘Respond’ and ‘Recover’ from an attack, mitigating the damage and assure data integrity to restore business function and reputation. 

NIST, focusses on restorative outcomes. It’s inferred that the cybersecurity instances will happen, it’s what you do about it that matters most. For example:

“Ensuring the organization implements Recovery Planning processes and procedures to restore systems and/or assets affected by cybersecurity incidents.”

Practical Steps towards NIST like outcome(s).

Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery is one such solution that aids in the implementation of not only the ‘Respond’ pillar but also of course ‘Detect’ and ‘Recover’.  Over the coming weeks, we will delve into what this means in practical terms.

Properly implemented, the adoption of a cohesive framework such as NIST, together with well-structured policies and controls, help to shift the dial towards us taking back resilient control and away from the chaos of ‘cope and hope’.

However, as somebody very famous once said, “there is nothing known as ‘perfect’. It’s only those imperfections which we choose not to see”. Or more accurately that we can’t see yet. So clearly an effective cyber resilient architecture must constantly evolve and be flexible enough to respond to future threats not yet defined. This is why the fluidity offered by framework such as NIST is so useful.

There are other exciting developments on the way, that will further shift the balance away from the bad actors, such as Zero Trust and Zero Trust Architectures. (These fit nicely into the Identity and Protect pillars) This blog series will look to deep dive into these areas in the coming months also.

This will not be a marketing blog however, there are way better people at that than I. I’ll happily leverage their official work where necessary (Citation via Hyperlinks are my friend!). The intent is that this will be a practical and technical series, with the goal to peel back the layers, remove the jargon where possible and provide practical examples of how Dell Technologies products and services, amongst others and our partners can help meet the challenges outlined above. (Disclosure & Disclaimer: Even though I work for Dell, all opinions here are my own and do not necessarily represent those of Dell, you’ll see me repeat that quite a bit !!)

What is a Resilient Architecture?

To conclude, we should think of a Resilient Architecture as an entity that is adaptive to its surroundings. It is impermeable to the natural, accidental or intentional disasters it may have to face in its locale/environs.

Resilient Architectures are not new, we have been building Data Centers for decades in high-risk environments such as earthquake zones and flood plains, where we expect failure and disaster. It will happen. Death and Taxes and all that….

Our DC Storage, Compute and Network architectures have been resilient to such challenges for years, almost to the point where it is taken for granted.  This tree certainly is under stress, but is hasn’t blown down…

Unfortunately, the security domain, hasn’t quite followed in lockstep. It isn’t until relatively recently that it has begun to play catch up, previously wedded in the belief that we could prevent everything by building singular monolithic perimeters around the organization. Anything that got through the perimeter we could fix. Clearly, this is no longer the case.

The mandates around Zero Trust and Zero Trust architectures are acknowledgement that this approach must change, in lieu of the proliferation of the multi-cloud and ever more mobile workforce and the failure of organisations to deal with cybersecurity attacks in a resilient, controlled fashion that protected their assets, revenue, reputation and IP.

One thing is for sure, these challenges are not going away, the security threat landscape is becoming infinitely more complex and markedly more unforgiving. Thankfully, flexible, modular frameworks such as NIST and ZTA, in addition to emerging technical tools, controls and processes will allow us deliver architectures that are both secure but ultimately and more importantly resilient.

DISCLAIMER
The views expressed on this site are strictly my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of Dell Technologies. Please always check official documentation to verify technical information.

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