Cyber Resilience refers to an entity's ability to continuously deliver the intended outcome despite adverse cyber events.
Cyber Resilience is an evolving perspective that is rapidly gaining recognition. The concept essentially brings the areas of information security, business continuity and (organizational) resilience together.
Entities with potential need of Cyber Resilience abilities include, but is not limited to; IT systems, critical infrastructure, business processes, organizations, societies and nation-states. Adverse cyber events are those that negatively impact the availability, integrity or confidentiality of networked IT systems and associated information and services. These events may be intentional (e.g. hacker attack) or unintentional (e.g. failed software update) and caused by humans or nature or a combination thereof.
The objective of Cyber Resilience is to maintain the entity´s ability to deliver the intended outcome continuously at all times. This means even when regular delivery mechanisms have failed, such as during a crisis and after a security breach. The concept also includes the ability to restore regular delivery mechanisms after such events as well as the ability to continuously change or modify these delivery mechanisms if needed in the face of new risks. Backups and disaster recovery operations are part of the process of restoring delivery mechanisms.
Resilience, as defined by Presidential Policy Directive PPD-21, is the ability to prepare for and adapt to changing conditions and withstand and recover rapidly from disruptions. Cyber Resilience focuses on the preventative, detective, and reactive controls in an information technology environment to assess gaps and drive enhancements to the overall security posture of the entity. The Cyber Resilience Review (CRR) is one framework for the assessment of an entity's resiliency created by the Department of Homeland Security. Another framework created by Symantec is based on 5 pillars: Prepare/Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover.