Cyber resilience refers to an entity’s ability to continuously deliver the intended outcome, despite cyber attacks.[1] Resilience to cyber attacks is essential to IT systems, critical infrastructure, business processes, organizations, societies, and nation-states. A related term is cyberworthiness,[2] which is an assessment of the resilience of a system from cyber attacks. It can be applied to a range of software and hardware elements (such as standalone software, code deployed on an internet site, the browser itself, military mission systems, commercial equipment, or IoT devices).
Adverse cyber events are those that negatively impact the availability, integrity, or confidentiality of networked IT systems and associated information and services.[3] These events may be intentional (e.g. cyber attack) or unintentional (e.g. failed software update) and caused by humans, nature, or a combination thereof.
The objective of cyber resilience is to maintain the entity’s ability to deliver the intended outcome continuously at all times.[4] This means doing so even when regular delivery mechanisms have failed, such as during a crisis or after a security breach. The concept also includes the ability to restore or recover regular delivery mechanisms after such events, as well as the ability to continuously change or modify these delivery mechanisms, if needed in the face of new risks. Backups and disaster recovery operations are part of the process of restoring delivery mechanisms.
Frameworks
Resilience, as defined by Presidential Policy Directive PPD-21, is the ability to prepare for and adapt to changing conditions and withstand and recover rapidly from disruptions.[5]
The National Institute of Standards and Technology‘s Special Publication 800-160 Volume 2 Rev. 1[6] offers a framework for engineering secure and reliable systems—treating adverse cyber events as both resiliency and security issues. In particular 800-160 identifies fourteen techniques that can be used to improve resiliency:
| Technique | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Adaptive Response | Optimize the ability to respond in a timely and appropriate manner. |
| Analytic Monitoring | Monitor and detect adverse actions and conditions in a timely and actionable manner. |
| Coordinated Protection | Implement a defense-in-depth strategy, so that adversaries have to overcome multiple obstacles. |
| Deception | Mislead, confuse, hide critical assets from, or expose covertly tainted assets to, the adversary. |
| Diversity | Use heterogeneity to minimize common mode failures, particularly attacks exploiting common vulnerabilities. |
| Dynamic Positioning | Increase the ability to rapidly recover from a non-adversarial incident (e.g., acts of nature) by distributing and diversifying the network distribution. |
| Dynamic Representation | Keep representation of the network current. Enhance understanding of dependencies among cyber and non-cyber resources. Reveal patterns or trends in adversary behavior. |
| Non-Persistence | Generate and retain resources as needed or for a limited time. Reduce exposure to corruption, modification, or compromise. |
| Privilege Restriction | Restrict privileges based on attributes of users and system elements as well as on environmental factors. |
| Realignment | Minimize the connections between mission-critical and noncritical services, thus reducing the likelihood that a failure of noncritical services will impact mission-critical services. |
| Redundancy | Provide multiple protected instances of critical resources. |
| Segmentation | Define and separate system elements based on criticality and trustworthiness. |
| Substantiated Integrity | Ascertain whether critical system elements have been corrupted. |
| Unpredictability | Make changes randomly and unexpectedly. Increase an adversary’s uncertainty regarding the system protections which they may encounter, thus making it more difficult for them to ascertain the appropriate course of action. |
Regulatory requirements
Regulatory frameworks increasingly incorporate cyber resilience concepts by requiring organizations to maintain continuity of operations during and after security incidents. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Security Rule requires covered entities to establish a contingency plan that includes data backup, disaster recovery, and emergency mode operation procedures to ensure the availability of electronic protected health information during emergencies (45 CFR 164.308(a)(7)).“45 CFR § 164.308 – Administrative safeguards”. Legal Information Institute. Retrieved April 1, 2026. The December 2024 HIPAA Security Rule NPRM proposed requiring regulated entities to restore critical information systems within 72 hours of a security incident and to establish and test procedures for system restoration, reflecting a shift toward resilience-based requirements.“HIPAA Security Rule To Strengthen the Cybersecurity of Electronic Protected Health Information”. Federal Register. January 6, 2025. Retrieved April 1, 2026.
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 explicitly addresses resilience through its Recover function, which encompasses recovery planning, improvements, and communications to restore systems and services affected by cybersecurity incidents.“NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0”. National Institute of Standards and Technology. February 2024. Retrieved April 1, 2026. NIST Special Publication 800-53 includes the CP (Contingency Planning) control family, providing detailed requirements for system recovery strategies, alternate processing sites, and resilience testing.“NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5: Security and Privacy Controls”. National Institute of Standards and Technology. September 2020. Retrieved April 1, 2026.
See also
Further readings
References
- ^ Björck, Fredrik; Henkel, Martin; Stirna, Janis; Zdravkovic, Jelena (2015). Cyber Resilience – Fundamentals for a Definition. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Vol. 353. Stockholm University. pp. 311–316. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-16486-1_31. ISBN 978-3-319-16485-4.
- ^ Roland L. Trope (March 2004), A Warranty of Cyberworthiness, vol. 2, IEEE Security and Privacy, doi:10.1109/MSECP.2004.1281252
- ^ Ross, Ron (2021). “Developing Cyber-Resilient Systems: A Systems Security Engineering Approach” (PDF). NIST Special Publication. 2 – via NIST.
- ^ Hausken, Kjell (2020-09-01). “Cyber resilience in firms, organizations and societies”. Internet of Things. 11 100204. doi:10.1016/j.iot.2020.100204. hdl:11250/2729453. ISSN 2542-6605.
- ^ “What Is Security and Resilience? | Homeland Security”. www.dhs.gov. 2012-12-19. Retrieved 2016-02-29.
- ^ (NIST), Ron Ross; (MITRE), Richard Graubart; (MITRE), Deborah Bodeau; (MITRE), Rosalie McQuaid (December 2021). “SP 800-160 Vol. 2 Rev 1., Developing Cyber-Resilient Systems: A Systems Security Engineering Approach”. csrc.nist.gov. Retrieved 2022-08-11.
- ^ (NIST), Ron Ross; (MITRE), Richard Graubart; (MITRE), Deborah Bodeau; (MITRE), Rosalie McQuaid (December 2021). “SP 800-160 Vol. 2 Rev 1., Developing Cyber-Resilient Systems: A Systems Security Engineering Approach”. csrc.nist.gov. Retrieved 2022-08-11.