4 Elements That Balance Security and Resiliency

Does your organization need to improve security and upgrade its IT infrastructure? If so, you’re not alone. Those are the top two reasons for the rise in EMEA IT budgets, according to the Foundry 2022 State of the CIO study.

These priorities are in response to an ever-evolving business and security landscape. IT departments are under increased pressure to provide resiliency amid new and advanced cyberattack risks, ongoing supply-chain disruptions, digital transformation efforts, and the complex hybrid workplace.

It’s a tight balancing act to ensure both security and resiliency, especially if like most organizations, you have a lean IT staff or there are skills gaps within your teams. But that’s where managed services can help.

How to balance security with resiliency

Most organizations recognize the need to increase cybersecurity protections; this is the top priority among 63% of EMEA respondents to the State of the CIO survey.

It’s a significant challenge. Although digital transformation efforts were already underway prior to COVID-19, primarily driven by the need for speed and efficiency, the pandemic escalated those initiatives. In some cases, it created even greater complexity as enterprises bolted on solutions and tools for the remote workforce.

These implementations have also led to security gaps and vulnerabilities. As a result, many organizations are grappling to manage and protect a complex web of IT architecture that spans on-premises, hybrid and multi-clouds, and edge environments.

How can enterprises balance the needs for robust security and resiliency for ongoing business operations? It starts with those cybersecurity protections and gaining the ability to anticipate, protect against, withstand, and recover from any cyberattack to minimize disruption.

A cyber risk framework can help provide these capabilities. It should include:

• End-to-end security assurance that provides reliable quantification of cyber risk throughout the enterprise. It also maintains and manages compliance via the consistent application of policies and controls, as well as threat management across the network, endpoints, and applications.
• Integration of Zero Trust principles and technologies — from edge to cloud.  This includes data and application protections, cloud and network security, and digital identity services to ensure secure digital transactions and interactions.
• Comprehensive security operation center (SOC) services that discover, prevent, and respond to advanced security incidents. Considering the significant need for security skillsets, the right technologies — including workflow automation and orchestration — and managed services must augment and enhance SOC operations management.
• Incident response and recovery to minimize the impact of outages. Downtime is not an option, so the framework should address training, simulation exercises, automation of policies, and threat investigation capabilities.

This framework also delivers business value, including cost reductions, improved user experiences that lead to greater productivity, and continuous compliance.

For example, a multinational bank with headquarters in the United Kingdom implemented automated cyber recovery technology to improve its operational resilience. The solution has not only enabled recovery from cyberattacks in hours rather than days, it also has provided continuous security through 24/7 forensics.

Align with the right partner

Establishing a cyber risk framework that fits your organization and business can, by itself, be a daunting task – without even trying to implement it. That’s where a managed services provider such as Kyndryl can help.

The right provider must have deep expertise, a well-established solution portfolio, and a broad partner ecosystem to maximize your investment and business outcomes. Kyndryl will work closely to understand your enterprise’s cyber resiliency maturity level, then tailor a framework to best augment your existing resources — and ultimately help balance robust security and resiliency.

Learn more about Kyndryl’s approach to balancing security and resiliency here.