DailyPost 229
RESILIENCE – THE WAY FORWARD
Hacks & breaches rule the roost on a day to day basis, with most of the sectors & stakeholders having no clue at all. The foregone conclusion is hacks are bound to happen. Whether it’s a loss to the inevitable or sheer lack of effort is what the future will sit in judgement on, the unison of thought presently seems that resilience should be the main area of focus in the creation & sustenance of a cyber secure system.
The capability to bounce back with at least the skeletal services with confidence is the what we are looking for, in the present changing times. The last attack on the Israeli Electricity grid forced them get into the manual mode for a few days. In a similar manner the watering hole attack on the Polish banks through the the regulators website is certainly scary . The system had to be brought down for investigation. This speaks of a malaise where crisis situations have not been covered during planning & gets unstuck when faced with such eventuality.
The lack of a non-resilient system is no system at all. With no capability of prevention & the capability to bring it back into operation confidently & successfully is no system at all. It happens to be a fair weather system not able to withstand the vagaries of nature. Normal planning cannot throw up plans for totally abnormal situations. It first needs a resilient mindset, to think on the lines of the adversary and plan to mitigate the same.
An inbuilt resilient system should be legally mandated with all guidelines & timelines put in place. Intimation of breach to the legal regulatory authority or the police should become the law of the land. The push towards Digital India would automatically get a big boost. Legal enablement of all governmental organisations & mechanisms who deal with critical information infrastructure & all digital services, public or private; should happen sooner than later to have complete faith in the new system which is being evolved. It will get firm foundation.
RESILIENT DIGITAL SYSTEMS ARE THE CRISIS MANAGERS OF THE CYBER WORLD.
Sanjay Sahay