U.S. Cyber Command a solid model for businesses to follow
The hacks and breaches of the past several years have made clear to us that cyber crime is here to stay, and that plans to prevent and mitigate the damage from these attacks is an absolute must for crisis management.
The rise in conversation about the United States’ own cyber-capabilities has revealed that our military agrees, as you can see clearly in this quote from the first commander of U.S. Cyber Command, Gen. Keith Alexander, featured in a Washington Times article:
“We have no alternative but to do so because every world event, crisis and trend now has a cyber-aspect to it, and decisions we make in cyberspace will routinely affect our physical or conventional activities and capabilities as well,” Gen. Alexander told lawmakers.
“Normalizing cyber requires improving our tactics, techniques and procedures, as well as our policies and organizations. It also means building cybercapabilities into doctrine, plans and training — and building that system in such a way that our Combatant Commanders can think, plan and integrate cybercapabilities as they would capabilities in the air, land and sea domains,” he said.
Just as the military has integrated cybercapabilities into every aspect of its operations, so must business owners the world over. By preventing the attacks you can and having specific plans in place to mitigate operational and reputation damage from those you can’t, you leave yourself in a much stronger position, and can get back to “business as usual” that much faster.