1. First, let's define cyber resilience. 

Comparison of Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience 
The ability of a company to protect itself against cyberattacks is the main focus of cybersecurity. Cyber resilience is a broader concept that includes both security and business resilience, which includes developing an awareness-based culture and the capacity to bounce back from cyberattacks. 

An effective cyber resilience plan should prioritize:

Avoidance 
Risk control, reaction, and recovery 
Since prevention is sometimes preferable to treatment, all businesses should implement preventative measures. An online art retailer called RiseArt was successful in rerouting malicious traffic from a cyberattack in 2016. They maintained the availability of their services by exercising vigilance and employing proactive strategies. 

The majority of cyberattacks can be avoided by following the fundamental procedures. Business resilience depends on the ability to recognize and address successful security breaches. 
 

2. The Significance of Cyber Resilience 

66% of small businesses have experienced cybercrime in the last two years, even though 93% of them have taken precautions to safeguard their operations from online threats. Those impacted have, on average, been victims four times during that time, costing each business a total of nearly £3,000. [The Small Business Federation] 

There may also be fines for not taking basic precautions. More than 26,000 Boomerang Video customers' personal information was stolen in 2014. The company was fined £60,000 by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for failing to take basic preventative measures. 

My size prevents me from being attacked. 
Contrary to popular belief, 38% of microbusinesses with two to nine employees had a cybersecurity breach or attack within the previous 12 months. [April 2017 Indian Government Cyber Security Breaches Survey] 

The consequences of cyberattacks 
All of the appointment data of a Scottish hair salon was lost in a hack that occurred in 2015. Even though you may believe that there is nothing valuable in your company that could be stolen, cyber breaches can harm it in other ways: 

temporary denial of network or file access 
Systems or software that are damaged or corrupted 
Removal or slowdown of a website or online services 
Permanent file loss can cripple your company. 
Theft of money Changes, destruction, or theft of personal information   Intellectual property theft The Effect 
Such breaches may have consequences beyond just financial ones: 
Unable to operate as a commercial enterprise 
Loss of a competitive edge 
Reputational damage and intellectual property loss 

3. Cybersecurity fundamentals 

The Cyber Essentials scheme was created by the government and the cybersecurity industry to offer a foundation of fundamental measures that all organizations can build upon. 
It serves two main purposes: 
Give a concise explanation of the fundamental safeguards that businesses should put in place to reduce the risk of common online threats.
enables businesses to show clients, investors, insurers, and others that they have taken these crucial precautions. 
In collaboration with small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), the Cyber Essentials program was created to be affordable, easy to use, and light-touch. Although 
Although it greatly lessens an organization's susceptibility, it is not made to handle more sophisticated, focused attacks. 
Organizations should evaluate the threat they face and add more security measures to their plan, just like they would with any other business risk. 
Five essential controls for cyber essentials: 
Devices called boundary firewalls and internet gateways are made to stop unauthorized access to or from private networks, but their full effectiveness depends on how well they are configured, either in terms of hardware or software. 
Ensuring that systems are set up as securely as possible for the organization's requirements is known as secure configuration.
Ensuring that only those who ought to have access to systems do so at the proper level is known as access control. 
Malware protection: making sure that antivirus software is installed and up to date. 
Patch management is making sure that all required vendor patches have been installed and that the most recent supported version of the applications is being used. 

4. Controls of boundaries 

Computers can communicate through more than 65,000 different "ports," or channels. A port that is left open can let someone else ask your computer to perform a malicious task. 
Firewalls 
One crucial safeguard that helps prevent attacks on your systems is a firewall. They behave similarly to traffic lights: 
Red: Don't talk 
Amber: restricted and filtered communication 
Green: Talk 
How Can I Help?
Turn on the firewall and make sure all networks and devices are secure. 
Set up the firewall to only permit essential communication and to block all ports other than those that are known to be in use. 
Password-protect your firewall. 

5. Secure configuration 

In their default settings, computers and network devices might not always be secure.

Weak points in standard ‘out of the box’ configurations may include:

An admin account with a pre-set, publicly known default password 
Pre-installed but unnecessary applications and services 
User accounts with unique access settings that are pre-installed 
Secure configuration is focused on limiting opportunities to attackers. 

How Can I Help?
Create an audit of systems your business uses 
Decide who needs access to what systems, and limit access strictly to the user need 
Use strong passwords 
Disable unused accounts and services 
Backup your data 

6. Access control 

Within your organization, every active user account facilitates access to devices and applications. Special privilege accounts have even more access; an exploited account could result in large-scale corruption of data and disruption to business processes. 

You must understand who has access to your data and ensure the appropriate restrictions are in place for valuable assets and systems. 

How Can I Help?
Restrict access to valuable data and systems 
Regularly check who has access 
Give thorough checks on ‘privileged’ accounts that have more access than others 

7. Anti-malware 

Downloading software from the internet can expose a device to malware, such as computer viruses, worms, and spyware. Sources of malware include email attachments, downloads, and installation of unauthorized software.

Antimalware scans your files, system, and email, searching for malicious content or behavior. If a system is infected with malware, your organization could experience malfunctioning systems or data loss. 

How Can I Help?
Deploy antivirus and malicious code checking solutions to continuously scan inbound and outbound objects 
Deploy a content filtering capability on all external gateways, which will try to prevent malicious code being delivered to desktop applications 
Only use software known to be trustworthy 
Where possible, disable auto-run functionality, which should prevent the automatic import of malicious code 
Scan every network component on a regular basis 
Ensure all anti-malware software is kept up to date 

8. Patching 

Keeping systems up to date is essential, as hackers target older or vulnerable systems. Patch management is the process of managing system and software updates—including how and when they are kept updated, change control, and testing. 

The WannaCry attack on the NHS in 2017 was due to vulnerabilities in computers that had not applied a recent patch update from Microsoft. 

Once exploited, software was installed, which encrypted all user files and demanded payment for them to be unlocked.

What Can I Do?
Patch known vulnerabilities with the latest version of the software 
Ensure the latest supported version of an application is used.

9. Training staff and dealing with 3rd parties 

Maintaining awareness of cyber risks within your organization ensures staff become a cyber asset. They will become less susceptible to vulnerabilities and be better able to detect malicious behavior—acting as the first line of defense for your organization. 
Your staff should: 
Be aware of good practice regarding passwords 
Back up data regularly 
Keep software up to date 
Lock computer screens when away from desks 
Realise the risk of conducting business on public Wi-Fi 
Understand and follow the organisation’s cybersecurity policies 
Educating staff should be an ongoing process as the cyber landscape shifts 
Incident Management Team 
When a cyber breach has been detected, the pressure will be on. It is critical that incident response roles are assigned to staff beforehand to ensure a swift response.
Your Response Team: 
Must possess the skills and knowledge required to respond to an incident 
Have a team leader that determines when an incident has occurred 
Should follow a clear procedure, using clear communication and coordination 
Should ensure compliance with existing procedures 
If weaknesses are found within, then action must be taken. In 2016, vulnerabilities were found in Tesco Bank’s mobile app. Despite being made aware of these issues, the company hadn’t taken immediate action.

Eventually the vulnerabilities were exploited by hackers who stole £2.5 million in customer money. While the bank reimbursed customers, the revelation that Tesco Bank had not acted on known vulnerabilities was just as damaging for consumer trust. 

10. Recovery 

In the event of a successful cyber breach, a recovery plan is essential for your organization to be resilient. 

Have a Plan 
Planning is critical to determine crisis-management and incident-management roles 
Arrangements should be made for alternate communication channels, services and facilities 
Explore different “what if” scenarios to identify gaps in your organisation before an incident occurs 
Exercise technical and non-technical aspects of recovery, such as personnel considerations or facility issues 
Recovery planning is fluid and not a one-time activity. You should continually review and improve upon your procedures. This can be achieved through lessons learned and periodically validating the recovery capabilities themselves. 

Use metrics to measure the effectiveness of the recovery process and determine if it was a success.

Build a Recovery Playbook 
Develop an inventory of all important information assets 
Identify what has been impacted by the incident and check against inventory 
Try to store configuration information to assist recovery 
Ensure where possible there are backups 
Keep everything maintained and up to date 
Measure and track the performance of the protective steps taken.