Slipstream Insights
How to Be Cyber Resilient
Resilience is hardwired into the DNA of a successful life sciences company.
Being resilient means your organization can continue bringing revolutionary products to the marketplace as quickly as possible. Your resilience is saving lives and improving the world.
What Is Cyber Resilience?
Generally speaking, cyber resilience is the ability to proactively manage risks and prevent them from becoming emergencies. In the pharma/biotech world, cyber resilience also involves managing a company’s workflow and productivity to ensure the focus can stay on the science.
This means constantly engaging in complex tasks like risk management, governance, regulatory compliance, data ownership, privacy/security maintenance, and conflict resolution.
Is tech-related adaptability truly a part of your organizational structure? Take a moment to ask, “How cyber resilient is my organization?”
Manage and Resolve Incidents Smoothly
The pharmaceutical/biotech industry is the #1 global target of cyberattacks, with 53% of breaches resulting from malicious activity.
A recent pharma industry study showed that cyberattacks are moving down the pharma supply chain and deeper into company information like financial credentials, employees’ personal data, and valuable intellectual property.
Incident management should be a built-in part of your systems to reduce vulnerability. There should also be a clear hierarchy of responsibility and fast resolution from an incident management team.
You may want to consider working with IT data management professionals who are always on standby and ready to help you.
Be Redundant (In a Good Way!)
Having redundancy means there are digital backups that preserve vital information regardless of everyday threats like power outages or security breaches.
To create redundancy, ensure there is always ample offsite storage to support your IT systems. Everything from your employee communications network to your product research and data storage should be built on a thoughtfully designed system of backups. Opt. for fully digital and integrated cyber management instead of paper and segregated systems.
Customize and Optimize Your Processes
Here are a few questions to consider:
- Is it designed specifically for your niche in the pharma/biotech industry?
- Does it meet your daily needs for storage, access, security, and serving your clients/partners?
- Does it have the bandwidth for the enormous amount of research and data you use in your organization?
Maintain Good Data Hygiene
Data hygiene ensures a company is always working with clean data. In pharma/biotech, it’s an essential part of cyber resilience because it ensures your company doesn’t ruin its work with extraneous or incorrect information. Here’s a brief list of common red flags that show you might have a problem with your data hygiene and/or data storage:
- Clinical trial data is too difficult or slow to analyze
- There are interruptions with sending or selling large volumes of data
- Low bandwidth for archiving important research
Build Productive Partnerships
Finally, one of the best ways to promote organizational cyber resilience is partnering with other firms already on the right track. Look into IT and managed services partnerships that support productivity and are tailor-made for the life sciences industry.