Finishing 2024 with Strength: Business Resilience

Recognizing the link between business resilience and cyber resilience is crucial as 2024 comes to a close. In today’s environment, organizations can’t fully achieve business resilience without embedding cybersecurity into their strategies. Cyber resilience is not just about defense – it’s about ensuring the continuity of operations and protecting critical assets, allowing a business to withstand disruptions, maintain trust and recover swiftly.

As we close out the year, setting a goal to enhance cyber resilience means setting a foundation for long-term stability and growth. Whether it is strengthening response strategies, reinforcing data protection measures or optimizing recovery plans, a resilient cybersecurity framework fortifies overall business resilience, which keeps teams, operations and stakeholders secure and confident in the organization's future.

So, what is cyber resilience? It’s the strategic approach where organizations aim to “bounce back” after an attack, minimizing disruption, financial impact and reputation. We identified the following CyBear essentials that can help build resilience:

CyBear Essential #1 - Foster a Security-First Culture

Culture remains a consistent theme. Every employee plays a role in cyber resilience. By creating a culture where cybersecurity is viewed as critical to business health, organizations encourage proactive vigilance. Storytelling, training and incentives can be powerful motivators, helping individuals understand their part in protecting company assets. A resilient organization requires active support from the C-suite to foster the culture. Cybercriminals thrive in secrecy, and by increasing awareness and transparency around potential risks, leaders empower their teams to be prepared and vigilant. By transforming cybersecurity from a siloed effort into a shared responsibility, organizations can not only withstand but also thrive amid the cyber challenges of today and tomorrow.

CyBear Essential #2 - Balance Cybersecurity with Business Goals

Use a balanced scorecard approach, where companies consider potential cyber risks alongside other factors, such as compliance and supply chain vulnerabilities. Using a structured framework like the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) helps in establishing governance practices that align resilience with overall business objectives. 

The NIST CSF has a significant influence on enhancing cyber resilience in today’s digital landscape. By adopting its five core functions – Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond and Recover – organizations can build a strong defense against cyber threats. This structured approach enables businesses to assess their current cyber security posture, develop targeted improvements and maintain a resilient digital infrastructure.

To implement the framework effectively, companies need to create a comprehensive action plan. This involves assessing the current state, setting clear goals, and prioritizing improvements based on business needs and risk management processes. By following this systematic approach, organizations can adapt to evolving threats and protect their assets, data, and reputation. In the end, the NIST CSF serves as a valuable tool to strengthen an organization's defenses and build a more secure digital future.

CyBear Essential #3 - Prioritize Preparation and Testing

Cyber resilience isn’t just reactive – it’s proactive. Firms need to anticipate potential cyber threats and assess which areas are most vulnerable. Practicing recovery plans, running simulations and testing systems through “tabletop exercises” are essential steps. Preparedness reduces the shock of a real attack, allowing a swifter return to normal operations. Testing should include customization to fit the business needs, so look for ways to incorporate this essential into your plan regardless of your company’s size. 

CyBear Essential #4 - Stay Vigilant with Artificial Intelligence

With so much hype, Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents a substantial business opportunity to increase operational efficiencies and effectiveness. When it comes to cybersecurity, AI is both a tool and a threat. As we adopt technologies, we need to understand the potential risks and threats that could impact our resilience. While it offers powerful ways to detect and respond to threats, it can also be weaponized. Businesses must remain cautious, adopting processes to guard against emerging AI-driven threats, such as deepfakes or manipulated data. Here are some helpful tips from VentureBeat: 

• Clean up access privileges immediately and delete former employees, contractors and temporary admin accounts: Start by revoking outdated access for former contractors, sales, service and support partners. Doing this reduces trust gaps that attackers exploit—and try to identify using AI to automate attacks. Consider it table stakes to have Multi-Factor Authentication applied to all valid accounts to reduce credential-based attacks. Be sure to implement regular access reviews and automated de-provisioning processes to maintain a clean access environment.
• Enforce zero trust on endpoints and attack surfaces, assuming they have already been breached and need to be segmented immediately. One of the most valuable aspects of pursuing a zero-trust framework is assuming your network has already been breached and needs to be contained. With AI-driven attacks increasing, it’s recommended to see every endpoint as a vulnerable attack vector and enforce segmentation to contain any intrusions. For more on zero trust, be sure to check out NIST standard 800-207.
• Get in control of machine identities and governance now. Machine identities – bots, IoT devices and more – are growing faster than human identities, creating unmanaged risks. AI-driven governance for machine identities is crucial to prevent AI-driven breaches. Automating identity management and maintaining strict policies ensures control over this expanding attack surface. Automated AI-driven attacks are being used to find and breach the many forms of machine identities most enterprises have.  
• If your company has an Identity and Access Management (IAM) system, strengthen it through multi-cloud configurations. AI-driven attacks are looking to capitalize on disconnects between IAMs and cloud configurations. That’s because many companies rely on just one IAM for a given cloud platform. That leaves gaps between AWS, such as Google’s Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. Evaluate your cloud IAM configurations to ensure they meet evolving security needs and effectively counter adversarial AI attacks. Implement cloud security posture management tools to assess and remediate misconfigurations continuously.
• Going all in on real-time infrastructure monitoring: AI-enhanced monitoring is critical for detecting anomalies and breaches in real-time, offering insights into security posture and proving effective in identifying new threats, including those that are AI-driven. Continuous monitoring allows for immediate policy adjustment and helps enforce zero trust core concepts that, taken together, can help contain an AI-driven breach attempt.
• Make red teaming and risk assessment part of the organization’s muscle memory or DNA. Don’t settle for doing red teaming on a sporadic schedule, or worse, only when an attack triggers a renewed sense of urgency and vigilance. Red teaming needs to be part of the DNA of any DevSecOps supporting MLOps from now on. The goal is to preemptively identify system and any pipeline weaknesses and work to prioritize and harden any attack vectors that surface as part of MLOps’ System Development Lifecycle workflows. 
• Stay current and adopt the defensive framework for AI that works best for your organization. Leverage your security committee to stay current on the many defensive frameworks available today, such as the NIST AI Risk Framework.
• Reduce the threat of synthetic data-based attacks by integrating biometric modalities and passwordless authentication techniques into every identity access management system. Consider using a combination of biometrics modalities, including facial recognition, fingerprint scanning and voice recognition, combined with passwordless access technologies to secure systems used across MLOps.

Thrive in ’25!

As we reflect on 2024 and look ahead, it's clear that integrating cyber resilience into business strategies is not just a necessity but a cornerstone for future success. By fostering a security-first culture, balancing cybersecurity with business goals, prioritizing preparation and testing, and staying vigilant with AI, organizations can build a resilient defense against cyber threats. This proactive approach ensures that businesses are not only prepared to face disruptions but can also recover swiftly, maintaining trust and stability. Thriving in 2025 will require a focused effort on strengthening cyber resilience, securing operations and confidently navigating the evolving digital landscape.

We hope you enjoyed our CyBear Essentials quarterly articles, and we look forward to continued topics in 2025! Happy Holidays!