Prioritizing Cyber Resilience Over Compliance: A Strategic Imperative

In today’s intricate regulatory landscape, organizations are often caught in a whirlwind of compliance requirements. From the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) in the European Union to the evolving standards of FedRAMP and various state-level data protection laws, the pressure to meet these obligations can lead to a dangerous mindset: prioritizing compliance over comprehensive cyber resilience. Christos Tulumba, Chief Information Security Officer at Veritas Technologies, emphasizes that a focus on fundamental security practices yields far better results than a mere checkbox approach to regulatory requirements.

The Compliance Trap

As organizations scramble to meet specific compliance criteria, they often overlook the broader picture of cyber resilience. While compliance is undoubtedly important, it should be a natural outcome of robust cyber resilience practices rather than the primary driver. The fundamental principles of cyber resilience remain unchanged, regardless of the regulatory environment. These principles include:

• Comprehensive asset visibility and monitoring
• Properly configured perimeter defenses
• Strong security policies (e.g., password management, principle of least privilege, remote access)
• Robust backup and recovery capabilities
• A security-centric culture through employee awareness
• Regular testing and rehearsal of security measures

Among these, Tulumba identifies three critical areas where organizations frequently fall short: comprehensive asset visibility and monitoring, robust backup and recovery capabilities, and fostering a security-centric culture.

Comprehensive Asset Visibility and Monitoring

The cornerstone of any effective cyber resilience strategy is understanding what needs protection. This begins with a complete inventory of all assets, including endpoints, servers, cloud resources, and connected devices. However, merely having a list is insufficient; organizations must maintain real-time visibility into the status and behavior of these assets.

To achieve this, organizations should implement a thorough asset discovery and monitoring strategy that includes:

• Automated discovery and classification of assets
• Continuous monitoring for changes and anomalies
• Integration with threat intelligence feeds for real-time risk assessment
• Comprehensive logging and audit trails

Maintaining this level of visibility not only enhances an organization’s ability to detect and respond to threats but also aids in demonstrating compliance with various regulatory requirements.

However, achieving comprehensive asset visibility is increasingly challenging in today’s hybrid IT environments. The dynamic nature of modern organizational networks, particularly with the rise of cloud-based assets, creates unique challenges for security teams. For instance, cloud resources can be rapidly provisioned and decommissioned, leading to potential blind spots in asset monitoring. Additionally, shadow IT—where employees use unauthorized cloud services—can introduce significant security vulnerabilities.

To combat these challenges, organizations must adopt multi-layered monitoring strategies that adapt to diverse IT landscapes. This may involve combining traditional asset discovery tools with cloud-native monitoring solutions, implementing network segmentation, and utilizing user and entity behavior analytics to detect unusual activities indicative of shadow IT usage.

Robust Backup and Recovery Capabilities

In an era marked by the alarming rise of ransomware attacks, robust backup and recovery capabilities are essential components of an effective cyber resilience strategy. Backups serve as the last line of defense against attacks that seek to lock organizations out of their data. However, it is crucial to ensure that backups are comprehensive, secure, and quickly recoverable in times of crisis.

Organizations should adhere to the 3-2-1 backup strategy: maintaining at least three copies of data in different locations on at least two distinct storage mediums, with at least one copy stored offsite and on immutable storage. Yet, the ability to recover data post-incident is arguably even more critical than simply having backups. Frequent recovery rehearsals are essential; practice truly does make perfect.

Integrating asset visibility with backup and recovery strategies is vital for comprehensive cyber resilience. This integration allows organizations to align their backup strategies with their most critical assets. Asset visibility tools provide a real-time picture of an organization’s IT landscape, enabling tailored backup frequency, retention policies, and recovery time objectives based on the criticality of each asset and regulatory requirements.

Many regulatory frameworks, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), mandate organizations to have a comprehensive understanding of their data assets and robust measures to protect them. By combining backup and recovery with asset visibility, organizations can more easily demonstrate compliance, showcasing their knowledge of data locations, protection measures, and recovery capabilities.

Fostering a Security-Centric Culture

While technical measures are crucial, the human element of cyber resilience cannot be overlooked. When organizational leaders emphasize that cyber resilience is a business imperative, it transforms the entire organization’s approach to security. A top-down approach includes regular briefings for executives, adequate resource allocation, and visible participation in security awareness activities.

Effective communication is central to cultivating a cyber resilience-conscious culture. This involves transparent incident reporting, regular updates on new threats and protection measures, and clear, accessible security policies. Providing comprehensive security education tailored to different roles and departments—through both formal training and informal learning opportunities—is equally important. Employees are more likely to comply with security measures when they understand not just the “what” but the “why” behind them.

For cyber resilience to become ingrained in an organization’s DNA, it must be integrated into everyday business processes. This means incorporating security considerations into project planning, making cyber resilience a key factor in vendor selection and management, and regularly conducting and acting on security risk assessments. By fostering a robust cyber resilience culture, organizations can ensure that technical measures are not only implemented but woven into the fabric of the organization, supporting compliance efforts and enhancing overall resilience.

In Closing

In the face of today’s complex regulatory requirements, the temptation to focus solely on compliance checkboxes is strong. However, true cyber resilience stems from prioritizing fundamental practices that enhance overall security posture—particularly comprehensive asset visibility and monitoring, robust backup and recovery capabilities, and fostering a security-centric culture. Organizations must remember that compliance should be a natural outcome of effective cyber resilience practices, not their primary driver. By adopting this mindset, organizations can navigate the regulatory landscape more effectively while fortifying their defenses against the ever-evolving threat landscape.