Cyber Resiliency: A Business Continuity Perspective

Lyndon Bird

The Business Continuity Institute

The threats posed by the Internet seem to be constantly in the media. These cover a multitude of issues, most of which are simply functions of criminal human behaviour, with technology as the chosen vehicle. Fraud, robbery, espionage, violent political protest, child pornography and other illegal activities existed prior to the Internet (and even before the advent of computers), and continue to do so in physical as well as virtual guises. However, there is no doubt that the digital age has provided opportunities for those with criminal or anti-social intentions to achieve their objectives more easily and more extensively.

This chapter does not set out to make an argument for or against the realities of the times. Social media has both good and bad implications, as do online banking, the change of shopping habits from the high street to the website, and the opportunity to easily make global virtual contacts. No problem is ever totally new: the emergence of motorised vehicles did not create bank robbery as a crime, but it gave its practitioners a more realistic possibility of getting away with it provided they developed the new skill of driving