Minimizing Business Disruption: A Discussion About Cyber Resilience on Nasdaq TradeTalks

Savvy threat actors continually find new ways to breach even the most security-conscious organizations, causing disruption to business operations along the way. Cyberattacks, the lasting impact they can have, and ways to achieve cyber resilience as we head into 2024 was the topic of discussion on a recent episode of Nasdaq TradeTalks with host, Jill Malandrino. Joining the expert panel was Christy Wyatt, Absolute CEO, Eric Liebowitz, CISO, Thales, Jud Welle, Partner, Data Privacy & Cybersecurity practice and the Complex Litigation & Dispute Resolution practice at Goodwin, and Wasim Khaled, Co-Founder & CEO of Blackbird.

Cyber Resilience: The Need for Basic Blocking and Tackling

Cyber attackers can rely on innovation and emerging technologies like AI, just as security and risk professionals do, but while threat tactics are evolving, the most common still stem from organizations overlooking the basics. As Wyatt points out, “it isn’t just about the bad things that can happen but also modeling it all the way out and how do you manage an attack from beginning to end? How do you make sure your security is working…what do you do when one of those goes offline?” Asking the question, ‘how resilient are you’ is too often forgotten.

A singular focus on threat prevention leaves out the critical consideration of how quickly business can be restored after an attack. Because it isn’t if a breach will happen, but when. Forward-thinking organizations shouldn’t consider security a hinderance, but a business enabler.

Restore Business to Safeguard Brand Reputation

When a cyberattack happens, the natural next step is to determine what happened and how. These are critical questions for the security team to address, and quickly. But as that work gets underway, the organization’s leadership and shareholders will zero in on business impact. Can products still be made? Can selling continue and can transactions be made? Uplevel any one of these individual concerns and brand reputation becomes a very real concern.

“The keyword is resilience,” said Wyatt. “It’s about bouncing back and making sure business gets back online.”

Geopolitical Implications

With no shortage of geopolitical worries like a government shutdown in the U.S. or another war, how might that impact cybersecurity? Thankfully, organizations recognize its importance. Even in a persistently uncertain economy, cybersecurity spend has not decreased. The better question may be is do they know if their security tools and other mission-critical applications are working as expected? With many layers of security tools – and resulting complexity - are they getting the most from their cyber investment?

Wyatt explains that as many users now work-from-anywhere and the number of devices that connect to the corporate network is growing exponentially, complexity is a real roadblock. Visibility into the health of devices and the growing number of applications that reside on them is now paramount. On average, there are 67 applications installed and running on enterprise devices at any time, with as many as a dozen of those deployed for security and compliance.

Organizations need to know if their tools are installed and healthy. This is how security risks are mitigated, users gain reliable connectivity, and throughout it all, resilience is achieved.  

Still a Missing Piece: Cyber Resilience

In all the years cybersecurity has been innovating against malicious threat actors, how are we doing? What will 2024 look like? Wyatt offers 3 ways to consider progress:

1. Threat detection and prevention. Innovation and emerging technologies have advanced security capabilities to a level never seen. The challenge is that innovation has also leveled up new attack types and threat actors are relentless. The game of whack-a-mole becomes increasingly more difficult.
2. Cybersecurity investments. Global cyber spend has grown exponentially over the last several years and shows no sign of slowing in 2024. It’s important and organizations recognize that.
3. Cyber Resilience. This last area – where organizations fortify their ability to respond and bounce back from an attack – is where the greatest opportunity for improvement lies. Regulation, education, visibility into your existing security layers and productivity tools, and the ability to cut complexity will make cyber resilience a priority in 2024.

Learn More About Achieving Cyber Resilience

Absolute is a leader in cyber resilience. Our Persistence technology is embedded in more than 600 million leading endpoints, adopted by more than 21,000 customers, and ensuring security and always-on performance for 14 million mobile and remote workers around the world. As innovators, we were recently recognized by Gartner in several Hype Cycle reports as a representative vendor for Automated Security Control Assessment (ASCA), a new category noted for delivering enterprise resilience. Visit our website to learn more about how your organization can achieve cyber resilience across its distributed workforce.