The nature of Cyber Resilience

Nowhere is resilience on better display than in nature. Trees are designed to bend but not break under the weight of snow or high winds. Our bodies automatically clean our blood, renew our cells and formulate a response when unwelcome viruses try to take hold. Nature is inherently designed for resilience. It’s time for Federal agencies to adopt a similar approach and move beyond the goal of achieving cybersecurity to a new goal of attaining cyber resilience.

Absolute security is absolutely impossible

As in nature, in our cyber domains things can and will go wrong. There is no question that attacks and breaches will occur. Yet we continue to erect virtual walls aimed at thwarting every invasion. What if…we adopted a new approach and architected systems and processes for cyber resilience. In other words design the actual assets to be difficult to attack, to minimize impact and potential loss when an event happens and to continuously deliver the intended capability no matter what.

Six ways federal organizations can plant strong roots for cyber resilience

1. Be brilliant at the basics.
2. Embrace the cloud for security.
3. Implement data centric security.
4. Demand application security by design.
5. Leverage software defined networking.
6. Engage in proactive defense