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Why the Cloud? Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination
So why is the intelligence community so interested in cloud computing? Three letters: PED (Processing, Exploitation, Dissemination). Take these two real life examples from the publishing industry. Jim Staten of…
World Summit of Cloud Computing: “Enterprise Cloud Computing” work group
To leverage attendees of the World Summit of Cloud Computing, a kick-off meeting of the “Enterprise Cloud Computing” work group will be held near Tel Aviv, Israel on December 3,…
Cloud Package Management
In his post “Missing in the Cloud: package management“, Dave Rosenberg highlights a critical issue in the adoption of cloud computing by government agencies. “I dare say that a standard…
PlugIntoTheCloud.com
Information Week has just launched PlugIntoTheCloud.com as their cloud computing destination. In his Non Linear Thinking blog, Bill Martin calls it a movement aimed at “providing a source and forum…
Is the cloud computing hype bad?
From Gartner “Why a little cloud hype might be useful“: “It’s too simplistic to say cloud hype is bad . If we are technically expert is might irritate us with…
Stop the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) !!
Dan Morrill! Count me in !! In his excellent article, “Cloud Computing is Scary – But the FUD Has to Stop“, Dan makes some excellent points: It is time to…
IBM, Microsoft and Google
On October 6th, IBM launched their cloud services initiative. This is a: “[C]ompany-wide initiative that extends its traditional software delivery model toward a mix of on-premise and cloud computing applications…
Government in the Cloud
Back in mid-September, there was quite a thread in the Google Cloud Computing Group on the use of cloud computing by the federal government. Some of the interesting comments were:…
CloudCamp Partners With SOA-R !!
I’m proud to announce that the final SOA-R Cloud Computing Education Event will be held in collaboration with CloudCamp. Now dubbed CloudCamp:Federal, the event will be held as an “unconference” to help…
Federal Cloud Computing Wiki
With the fast growing interest in cloud computing, the Federal Government community has established a Federal Cloud Computing Wiki. This wiki is managed by Dr. Brand Niemann, Senior Enterprise Architect…
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A steel bar is resistant to stress and is capable of maintaining its form while bearing large loads. While steel is also known as one of the world’s strongest metal’s (Titanium, Tungsten and Iconel round out the top four) , it is also susceptible to shearing and completely breaking. A rubber brick, on the other hand, will bend easily under even small loads, but it’s extremely difficult to snap or break. Moreover, once the load is removed from the rubber, its flexibility returns it to its original form. This is how the rubber brick displays resiliency.
Business resiliency enables organizations that have suffered a damaging incident to bounce back to their former form. This is especially important for small and medium sized businesses because according to Tim Francis, enterprise leader for cyber insurance for Travelers, 60% of all cyberattacks in 2014 struck small to medium-sized businesses. If you think company strength will protect you from this type of adverse incident, you are mistaken. Since salary and benefits for the workforce represents one of the largest expenses for a company, the “Revenue per employee” ratio is often used by investor as a measure of company strength. This ratio is most useful when comparing companies within the same industry. Using this ratio, the following companies were fairly strong before they were attacked but they didn’t have the resiliency to bounce back afterwards:
- Code Spaces (Annual Revenue $2.4M, Employees: 12, Revenue/Employees: $200,000) was cited by SC Magazine as one of nearly 60% of small businesses that fail within six months of being hacked. The company was accessed through via its Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud control panel. The attackers attempted to extort the business by claiming a “large fee” would resolve data loss issues. Code Spaces was unable to continue operations as it acknowledged that the company had suffered debilitating damages to both its finances and reputation.
- In 2011 Distributed.it (Annual Revenue: $691,092, Employees: 2, Revenue/Employees $230,364) had secured 10% of the market for Australian domain names, held multiple international domain accreditations and had 30,000 hosting clients through 3,000 active resellers. Later that year the business suffered a severe cyberattack when attackers targeted and destroyed servers inside Distribute.IT’s network, including back-ups, then locked the IT team out, meaning the only way to get control was to ‘pull the plug’ at the datacenter
By way of comparison, in 2015 the revenue per employee ratios for IBM and Panasonic were $244,447 and $275,839 respectively. So how should a company build up resilience against a cyberattack?
Years of conflict have taught the military how to build resiliency and researchers with the National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) have actually developed a scale to rate psychological traits that promote resilience. Called the Response to Stressful Experiences Scale (RSES), the measurement has been tested in more than 1,000 active-duty military personnel and identifies six factors that are key to psychological resilience:
- Positive outlook
- Active coping
- Self-confidence
- Learning and making meaning
- Acceptance of limits
- Spirituality
With this as guidance, business leaders can take the following steps towards building cyber resiliency within your organization:
- Build a positive outlook by educating senior management on the cyber threat and the practical steps that can be taken to prevent economic and reputational losses;
- Actively cope with the threat through an active cybersecurity defense team with the responsibility to protect corporate assets;
- Build self-confidence by periodically testing your cyber defense and business continuity processes;
- Establish a continuous learning environment through regular and relevant training events for the entire staff;
- Understand your limits and manage cyber risks that can’t be eliminated; and
- Believe in your team
In addition to these worthwhile leadership activities, more pragmatic steps should include:
- Establishing a company-wide end to end approach to high availability based on technology, processes and your organizational requirements;
- Practical backup and disaster recovery procedures that are exercised regularly;
- An economic on-site or off-site data backup service that leverage cloud-based resources; and
- A business continuity management plan that reduces risks and improve availability while simultaneously controlling operational expenses.
With any luck, these steps will not only make your company more resilient, but it may also help you prevent the debilitating effect of a cyberattack.
This post was brought to you by IBM Global Technology Services. For more content like this, visit Point B and Beyond.
( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS – © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2016)
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