Who Manages Cyber Resilience in Your Organization?

As cyber risks proliferate, organizational leaders seek to enhance security and minimize disruptions. But who takes ownership of cyber resilience? In practice, effective cyber resilience requires company-wide coordination.

At its core, the information technology (IT) team safeguards systems and data. IT staff are directly responsible for threat monitoring, access controls, backups, system redundancies, and other cybersecurity measures.

However, IT alone cannot drive resilience without alignment to business needs. The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and other leadership must provide strategy and resources to balance security, operations, and acceptable risk tolerance.

Operating teams then make resilience actionable. By participating in preparedness drills, containing incidents, and enacting continuity plans, they put resilience into practice. Individual employees also contribute by adhering to best security practices.

A Collaborative Endeavor

With so many players spanning IT, executive leadership, operations, legal, and human resources, forums for alignment are essential. Cross-functional committees can coordinate priorities, investments, policies, training, and risk assessments.

By breaking down silos between groups, organizations take an enterprise approach. This cross-pollination embeds resilience into culture and workflows for staff readiness. It also provides executive-level visibility so that resilience efforts never lose momentum.

In sum, cyber resilience requires everyone's contributions - from alerting on red flags to allocating resources to recovering from incidents. Shared vigilance and ownership distributed across departments make organizations adaptable in the face of cyber events.

In conclusion, cyber resilience is ultimately a team effort requiring company-wide collaboration. When all stakeholders collectively participate, organizations can rapidly bounce back despite the inevitable cyber disruptions of tomorrow.