Building a Cyber Resilient Health and Social Care Sector: The 5 Pillars of England's Cyber Security Strategy, an the lessons business's can take away.
The UK government has recently published a new cyber security strategy for health and adult social care in England. The strategy sets out five key pillars to promote cyber resilience across the sector, protecting services and the patients they support. While this strategy is specific to the health and social care sector, there are important lessons businesses can learn from the adoption of these five pillars.
1. Identify Vulnerable Area
The first pillar is to identify the areas in the sector where disruption would cause the greatest harm to patients, such as through sensitive information being leaked or critical services being unable to function. For businesses, this means taking the time to identify their most critical assets and processes that are essential to their operations. By understanding their vulnerabilities, businesses can better allocate their resources and build resilience against potential cyber threats.
2. Unite and Collaborate
The second pillar is to unite the sector so that it can take advantage of its scale and benefit from national resources and expertise, enabling faster responses and minimizing disruption.
Businesses can learn from this by forging alliances with other organizations in their industry or sector. By collaborating and sharing information, businesses can strengthen their collective defenses against cyber threats.
3. Engage Leaders and Grow Cyber Workforce
The third pillar is to build on the current culture to ensure leaders are engaged and the cyber workforce is grown and recognized, and relevant cyber basics training is offered to the general workforce.
Businesses should prioritize building a strong cyber culture within their organization by investing in employee training and development. This will not only improve cyber resilience but also create a security-minded culture throughout the organization.
4. Embed Security into Emerging Technology
The fourth pillar is to embed security into the framework of emerging technology to better protect it against cyber threats. Businesses should adopt a similar approach by embedding security into the design and implementation of their systems and applications. This can be achieved through threat modeling, secure coding practices, and continuous security testing throughout the development lifecycle.
5. Minimize Impact and Recovery Time of a Cyber Incident
The final pillar is to support every health and care organization to minimize the impact and recovery time of a cyber incident. Businesses should have a clear incident response plan in place that includes regular testing and updates. This will help minimize the impact of any cyber incident and enable a swift recovery.
In conclusion, the new cyber security strategy for health and adult social care in England sets out a clear plan to promote cyber resilience across the sector. Businesses can learn important lessons from the adoption of these five pillars to better protect their own operations against potential cyber threats.
By identifying vulnerabilities, collaborating with other organizations, investing in employee training, embedding security into emerging technology, and having a clear incident response plan, businesses can build a strong cyber culture and reduce the risk of a devastating cyber attack.