Understand cyber resilience
A plain-language guide for manufacturing SMEs — no specialist cybersecurity knowledge required.
The digital systems, technologies and platforms used in daily operations to manage information: computers, accounting systems, inventory systems, email, internet, cloud storage and other digital tools that support your work processes.
Cyber resilience goes beyond preventing attacks. It is the ability to anticipate disruptions, withstand them, recover quickly and adapt afterwards.
Your organisation is building basic preparedness and awareness of cyber risks to its information infrastructure.
Focus on building awareness, identifying your critical systems and putting basic protective controls in place.
Your organisation demonstrates stronger controls and the ability to respond to cyber disruptions as they happen.
Focus on strengthening technical controls, incident response procedures and third-party governance.
Your organisation has established recovery capabilities and restores critical services after cyber incidents.
Focus on recovery-time targets, tested backups and coordinated restoration of critical systems.
Your organisation learns from incidents, absorbs new knowledge and continuously improves its resilience.
Focus on sustaining organisational learning, absorbing emerging practice and continuous improvement.
Cybersecurity Training and Awareness (CTA) refers to an organisation’s capability to develop employees’ cybersecurity knowledge, risk awareness, and role-based competencies through structured and continuous training, enabling them to recognise cyber threats and respond appropriately to incidents affecting the information infrastructure (Adapated from (NIST (2024c); Carías et al. (2020); Johansson et al. (2022); Fatima et al., (2024); Tolah et al. (2019)).
Cyber Control and Incident Response (CCIR) refers to an organisation’s capability to implement integrated cybersecurity controls and structured incident response processes to detect, analyse, contain, and mitigate cyber threats, while coordinating actions and maintaining the stability of its information infrastructure during disruptions (Adapted from NIST (2024c); Ross et al. (2024); Swanson, (2021); Ab Rahman & Choo (2015); Schneier (2014))
Recovery Capability (RC) refers to an organisation’s ability to restore critical information infrastructure operations to acceptable levels through coordinated recovery processes, supported by prepared resources, within an appropriate timeframe and cost following cyber disruptions (Adapted from NIST (2024c); Bartock et al. (2016); Fisher (2010); NIAC (2009); Carlson et al. (2015))
Absorptive Capacity (AC) refers to an organisation’s ability to recognise, assimilate, integrate, and apply new external knowledge to enhance its capabilities and improve the resilience of its information infrastructure (Adapted from Cohen & Levinthal (1990); Zahra & George (2002); Lane et al. (2006); Ghahramani et al. (2023); Al-Somali et al. (2024))
Learning Capability (LC) refers to an organization’s ability to systematically extract, share, and apply lessons from cyber incidents to continuously improve its processes, practices, and resilience in managing future cyber threats (Adapated from Ab Rahman & Choo (2015); Ahmad et al. (2012); Tøndel et al. (2014); Ghahramani et al. (2023); Patterson et al. (2024)).
Cyber Resilience (CR) is the ability to anticipate, withstand, recover from, and adapt to adverse conditions, stresses, attacks, or compromises on systems that use or are enabled by cyber resources (NIST, 2024; Tzavara & Vassiliadis, 2024).