Economic Development Recovery and Resiliency Playbook - Flipbook - Page 82
Protecting Community Assets
from Cyberattack
The risk of cyberattack continues to be a pressing issue for
many communities, and for good reason. In 2021, the average
cost of a data breach reached its highest point in 17 years,
rising to $4.24 million.104 Furthermore, in its most recent 2020
report, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime
Center received 791,790 cybercrime complaints, with losses
totaling about $4.2 billion.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in
the U.S. Department of Commerce ofers a framework to help
organizations — regardless of size, degree of cybersecurity
risk, or cybersecurity sophistication — apply the principles
and best practices of risk management to improve security
and resilience.105 The five Framework Core Functions106
should be performed concurrently and continuously to
help organizations form an operational cultural to address
dynamic cybersecurity risk. These functions include:
• Identify — Build organizational understanding to
manage cybersecurity risk to systems, people, assets,
data, and capabilities;
• Protect — Develop and implement appropriate
safeguards to ensure delivery of critical services;
• Detect — Develop and implement appropriate
activities to identify the occurrence of a cybersecurity
event;
• Respond — Develop and implement appropriate
protocols when a cybersecurity incident is detected;
and
• Recover — Develop and implement appropriate
activities to maintain plans for resilience and to restore
any capabilities or services that were impaired due to a
cybersecurity incident.
When establishing an internal cybersecurity program
for the first time, NIST suggests taking seven steps that
can apply to any organization, whether it is an economic
development agency, small business, or nonprofit. The
steps are:
1. Prioritize and scope;
2. Orient;
3. Create a current profile;
4. Conduct a risk assessment;
5. Create a target profile;
6. Determine, analyze, and prioritize gaps; and
7. Implement an action plan.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
(CISA), a subagency of the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security, ofers a variety of tools to help community
leaders address cyberattack concerns. Its cybersecurity
site (https://www.cisa.gov/cybersecurity) provides a
number of links to helpful resources, including:
• The CISA Cyber Essentials Starter Kit — A guide
to help develop an actionable understanding of
how to implement organizational cybersecurity
practices;
• Incident Response Training — No-cost
cybersecurity incident response training
for government employees and contractors
across federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial
governments, and educational and critical
infrastructure partners;
• A CISA Tabletop Exercise Package that empowers
users to use pre-built templates and vetted
scenarios to develop tabletop exercises to
assess, develop, and update information-sharing
processes, emergency plans, policies, and
procedures; and
• A Ransomware Guide that includes ransomware
prevention best practices and a ransomware
response checklist.
to resources that are relevant to local businesses’ needs, such as short-term business loans, counseling to revise business
plans, access to employer relief programs, and other services. The faster that business owners are connected with value-added
services, the more quickly they can advance to recovery and the more likely they are to help promote these same services
to other impacted businesses. To mitigate cyberattack or exploitative data mining, government and economic development
oficials should take care to apply data privacy and security protocols to any confidential business data that is collected.
104
https://www.ibm.com/security/data-breach
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/CSWP/NIST.CSWP.04162018.pdf
106
https://www.nist.gov/cyberframework/resources
105
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