When a hurricane or major storm is rolling in, everyone knows to think of their physical security. However, oftentimes, organizations fail to consider the potential effects of these and other natural disasters on their cybersecurity, as the aftereffects can result in loss of power, damage to data security operations centers, or the inability to contact key cybersecurity resources and get them on site. And beyond these direct effects, there’s the additional concerns of increased activity by bad actors after a disaster strikes, as they seek to take advantage of any temporary weaknesses to a company’s cybersecurity.
Instead of waiting to see what happens and reacting only then, CSOs and CISOs need to make sure their disaster plans carefully considers security, and how each type of disaster may affect it, particularly with respect to redundancy and resiliency. Says Christos Tulumba, CISO of Veritas Technologies, “There are pillars to building out a proper cybersecurity program. Think beyond backup for a second: there are things like endpoint protection, mail gateways, and other core fundamental pieces. But the one that I see the most often overlooked is data backup and resiliency. A lot of companies assume that, ‘Yeah, we’re doing it and we have our backups’ — even though they don’t know how accurate and resilient those backup copies are.”
Similarly, companies need to consider how they’ll contact employees, especially at a time when many key people may be working remotely, or otherwise providing offsite support which may be disrupted, and consider how any disaster plans they have can be tested. Says Justin Turner, principal general manager with Microsoft Defender Experts, the first time trying a response plan is usually the hardest and that’s been the case everywhere I’ve been. The good news is you know quickly what works and what doesn’t and adjust. In every case, I learned where we hadn’t accounted for impacts to areas of the organization less visible.”
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