It’s a myth that a cyberattack won’t happen to you. One in three organizations has already been a victim of a cyber attack, with other studies even suggesting 9 out of 10 companies. Anyone can become a cyber victim. We find it very normal for organizations to regularly conduct fire drills. Everyone gets up from their desks and heads to a central meeting point, practicing evacuation routes and counting heads at the assembly point. However, the chance of a fire occurring at your company is 1 in 8000. Compare that to the likelihood of a cyberattack, and yet we see that practicing cyber scenarios is much less common than fire drills.
Practicing cyberattacks in the supply chain is an important weapon in the fight against cyber threats. On March 31st, CCRC’s Cyber Boost session took place where participants practiced together. Gathering practical examples, connecting with reality, creating more awareness, and obtaining tools to deal with a cyberattack were some of the expectations with which participants started this session.
During the plenary session, we examined the hacker and victim journey during a cyberattack. Afterwards, the participants had to get to work themselves and manage a fictional cyberattack under time pressure in different rounds.
This resulted in valuable conclusions and lessons that the participants could take back to their own companies to define concrete actions to become more resilient.
The unanimous conclusion was that a cyberattack can bring significant impact and costs, but with the right practice, you can drastically reduce these and better protect your organization. Because if you haven’t prepared possible scenarios with corresponding action plans, the decision to go offline or not during an incident is actually impossible to make. You never have enough information about what’s going on. Regularly practicing, together with others, and setting up clear communication channels to take concrete steps immediately in the golden hour of an attack can significantly limit the damage.
This is of course just the beginning, because only together with your chain partners can you practice realistic scenarios! Will you be there next time?
It’s very useful to hear experiences from others, you always learn new things and there are always different ways to look at things or things I hadn’t seen before
Jelle Niemantsverdriet, Microsoft