Cyber security and cyber resilience are two very important topics for any business. Where cyber security aims to protect your assets, cyber resilience prepares for an inevitable breach.

Contrary to what many people believe, these do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. In this article we will discuss the difference between cyber security and cyber resilience, as well as how you can best prepare your organisation with both approaches in mind.

So, what’s the difference?

Cyber security is all about protecting your information and assets from malicious threat actors (i.e. hackers). It safeguards what you have and aims to minimise financial and reputational consequences from a cyber attack.

In some ways this is similar to physical security – making sure doors are locked, windows are shut, and the alarm is activated when you’re out of the office.

Cyber resilience, on the other hand, may be viewed more as the insurance policy. It’s your trusty failsafe that keeps you running even when your security measures fail.

The goal of resilience is to prepare for the worst-case scenario, ensuring your business can sustain operations during crisis and can successfully ‘bounce back’ after a cyber event.

Both approaches are vital to your organisation

Cyber security is like the walls of a house – it keeps you safe from intruders, but what about when there’s an earthquake? It can be just as devastating for businesses that have not prepared themselves with resilience in mind.

When preparing your company for cyber attacks, you should always seek out experts across both domains.

Cyber security advisors will help you understand:

• who and what do you need to defend yourself from
• which assets you should secure as a priority, and
• how to best protect your organisation from cyber attacks.

Whereas, your cyber resilience advisor will help position you to best:

• survive ‘black swan’ cyber events (e.g. WannaCry or NotPetya)
• sustain baseline operations during a cyber attack
• recover (i.e. ‘bounce back’) from a crisis, and
• adapt to the ever-changing threat landscape.

The main takeaway here is not so much which approach is better than the other, but rather why each one plays an important role in keeping your business secure while also ensuring critical business operations continue during times of crisis or failure.

What do I need to know as a business owner?

Sometimes all these new labels and buzzwords can seem a little overwhelming. That’s why, as a business owner it is important to remember that cyber security and cyber resilience should not be considered mutually exclusive – they should be addressed together to ensure your business is as secure and resilient as possible.

So, what should you do? You can never start planning for cyber security and cyber resilience too soon. The key is to ensure your security advisors are experienced across both areas. Regular cyber resilience assessments will also go a long way to help you stay on top of your company’s overall level of cyber resilience, particularly in relation to vulnerabilities identified during routine cyber security operations.

Adopting both approaches as part of your overall security programme will give your business the best of both worlds – cyber security to keep the hackers out, and cyber resilience to keep you afloat when all else fails.

In conclusion

Cyber security and cyber resilience are two very important areas of business that should not be overlooked. Although they both aim to keep your organisation safe, each approach is fundamentally different in how it seeks to achieve these goals.

As a business owner or manager, you need the best team possible working toward keeping your business safe while ensuring critical operations continue when things go wrong. This can only happen if your security advisors also have experience in resilience.