Cyber Resilience, what is your plan and who is on your team

1. Know What Actually Matters to the Business, Before the Crisis Hits

When an attack lands, deciding which systems matter most is too late. You need to know now. But here's the catch: Security knows where the threats are, and IT knows what breaks the business.

Resilience begins with a shared understanding of business risk. That means joint risk assessments that go beyond compliance checklists and map systems, data, and workflows to revenue, reputation, and continuity.

It's not about scoring threats. It's about prioritizing what the business can't afford to lose and making that the north star for your resilience strategy.

2. Integrate Incident Response and Disaster Recovery or Expect Chaos

You've got an IR plan. You've got a DR plan. But if they were written by two teams in two different years, they'd collapse under pressure.

Cyber resilience demands that CIOs and CISOs merge recovery and response into one coherent plan. When systems go down, there's no room for finger-pointing over who owns what  you need muscle memory built through joint playbooks, tested scenarios, and clear handoffs between containment, communication, and restoration.

A disconnected response plan turns a three-hour outage into a three-day crisis. Integration isn't a best practice it's survival.

3. Build Recovery-Ready Systems Not Just Defensible Ones

Everyone talks about "zero trust," segmentation, and hardened perimeters. Great. But what happens when attackers get in anyway?

Resilience isn't just about prevention it's about recovery by design.

That means systems that are:

• Segmented to contain damage
• Built with automation to restore quickly
• Backed up in ways that can't be encrypted or deleted by an attacker 

CIOs must lead on architecture. CISOs must ensure recoverability. Together, they must plan for failure as a design requirement, not an edge case. 

4. Treat Detection as a Team Sport, Not a Tech Stack

When alerts flood the SOC, and logs are scattered across platforms, the attacker's already winning. Too often, CIOs own the infrastructure, and CISOs own the detection tools but no one owns the complete picture. 

Resilience requires unified visibility. That means:

• Logging standards across all environments
• Shared observability goals
• Streamlined escalation paths between ops and Security 

The goal isn't more alerts. It's faster, joint action based on shared insight. Resilience lives or dies in the response window and you don't get that with siloed dashboards. 

5. Create a Culture Where Accountability Is Shared Not Shifted

Resilience isn't just technical it's cultural. And in too many organizations, the second something goes wrong, IT looks at Security, and Security looks at IT. That has to change.

 Cyber resilience requires shared KPIs, reporting, and joint storytelling to the board. CIOs and CISOs should present, test scenarios, and build a language that frames resilience as a business enabler, not a turf war.

When the CEO asks, "Are we prepared?" the answer should be in one voice.

6. Don't Let Your Weakest Vendor Be Your Biggest Risk

Here's the nightmare scenario: you did everything right internally, but your critical SaaS provider just got breached and now your data is in the wind.

Third-party risk is no longer theoretical. It's operational. This means CIOs and CISOs must co-own a process that:

• Screens vendors before onboarding
• Enforces security clauses and SLAs
• Reviews business continuity plans across the supply chain 

If your business depends on it, your resilience plan should cover it. And yes that means grilling vendors like they're part of your team.

Lead This Together, Or Risk Losing Alone

Cyber resilience doesn't belong to one department. It's not Security's job to defend, and it's a job to restore. It's a joint mission to keep the business running through disruption whether that disruption is digital, geopolitical, or human error. 

CIOs and CISOs are stronger together. But only if they plan, test, and lead from the same playbook.

Because when the breach happens, you won't have time to debate responsibilities. You'll need to move fast, aligned, and as one team. 

FAQ’s On Cyber Resilience

 1. How do we measure cyber resilience meaningfully to executive leadership and the board?

 Answer

Cyber resilience should be framed in business terms, not just technical metrics. Here are a few key measures that resonate at the executive level:

• Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Recover (MTTR) are core detection and recovery readiness indicators.
• RTO/RPO compliance rates how consistently the org hits recovery time and data loss thresholds.
• Tabletop exercise results including response time, decision-making speed, and cross-team collaboration scores.
• % of critical assets covered by tested recovery plans shows maturity and business alignment.
• Resilience maturity score (via NIST CSF or similar frameworks) gives benchmarking value over time.

Tie these metrics directly to business impact reduction, not just operational performance. The board wants to know: "Can we absorb a hit and keep going?"

 2. How should budgets for cyber resilience be structured and who should own them?

 Answer

Cyber resilience cuts across silos, so shared ownership is key. A blended funding model is often the most effective:

• Security (CISO) budgets should cover detection tools, threat intel, IR platforms, red teaming, and resilience testing.
• IT (CIO) budgets should fund infrastructure upgrades for recovery (e.g., immutable storage), automated failover, and backup systems.
• Joint or enterprise-level budgets should cover cross-functional initiatives like tabletop exercises, BC/DR consultants, and supply chain audits.

 When budgets are siloed, critical capabilities fall through the cracks. Consider creating a "Resilience Fund" a pooled investment line item co-owned by IT and Security for shared initiatives.

 3. What role should enterprise architecture and application development teams play in cyber resilience?

Answer

These teams are often overlooked but critical to making resilience scalable and sustainable.

• Enterprise architecture should enforce recovery and failover as design principles, not bolt-ons. For example, apps should be designed with microservices and failover zones built in, or segmented environments for critical functions should be ensured.
• AppDev/DevOps teams should integrate secure coding, dependency scanning, and automated rollback capabilities. Resilience isn't just about bringing infrastructure back online — it's about ensuring the apps function in degraded or alternate states.

 The bottom line is that if it's not designed to recover, it won't. Pull these teams into resilience planning early and tie their KPIs to service continuity, not just feature delivery. 

4. How do we ensure resilience planning includes remote work, hybrid infrastructure, and cloud-native environments?

 Answer

Modern environments break traditional assumptions about physical boundaries and centralized control, and your resilience strategy must evolve accordingly.

• Cloud-native environments require a shift from backup-based recovery to infrastructure-as-code redeployment and cross-region failover.
• Remote work introduces dependencies on third-party apps (e.g., Microsoft 365, Slack, Zoom) and endpoints outside direct control meaning endpoint detection and response (EDR) and identity management (IAM) become resilience-critical.
• Hybrid infrastructure demands a coordinated plan across on-prem, private, and public clouds with clear ownership models for recovery responsibilities.

 CIOs and CISOs must ensure recovery plans are platform-agnostic, regularly tested in real-world configurations, and that remote access can be maintained even under duress.

 5. What is the role of cyber insurance in a resilience strategy and how does it affect IT/security decision-making?

 Answer

Cyber insurance is no substitute for resilience, but if managed strategically, it can be a powerful financial safety net.

• Insurance can help cover incident response costs, forensics, PR/legal support, and business interruption losses.
• However, most policies have strict conditions: specific controls must be in place (e.g., MFA, offsite backups), and particular vendors may be required for breach response.
• CIOs and CISOs must review policy terms together and ensure that security and recovery practices align with insurer expectations.

 Use insurance requirements to drive internal alignment and investment. If your policy excludes ransomware coverage due to weak backup controls, that's leverage to fund improvement.