Proceedings of the

The 33rd European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL 2023)
3 – 8 September 2023, Southampton, UK

On the Cyber-Emergency Preparedness in a Resilient Organization

Anurag Shukla1, Even Andre Solbakken2 and Riana Steen3

1Information technology, Institute for Energy Technology, Norway.

2Emergency and HSE Nuclear Sector, Institute for Energy Technology, Norway.

3Accounting and Operations Management, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway.

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the scientific fields of cyber-security and resilience engineering have emerged as new ways to deal with emerging risks in cybersocio- technical systems. Unlike conventional security management approaches, focusing on historical data to provide an accurate risk picture, resilience engineering aims to enhance an organization's capacity to anticipate, monitor, and adapt to disruptions and surprises. However, with the increasing cyber threats and changes in national and international security policies, there is a pressing need to examine the resilience characteristics of cyber emergency preparedness in both the public and private sectors. To address this need, this study adopts a triangulation method through an online survey and interview with two subject matter experts in the cyber domain. It explores factors that might contribute to enhancing cyber emergency preparedness in dealing with potential cyber threats and attacks. Findings suggest that front-line operators have limited information and capacity to process existing data in the domain of cyber security, highlighting a need for enhancing cyber-related knowledge across organizations. Furthermore, 25% of enterprises in the sample update their cybersecurity risk picture only once a year. The lack of more frequent updates downscales the contingency plans' thoroughness and puts companies in a vulnerable situation, given the increasing trend of cyber-attacks.

Keywords: Risk, Risk management, Risk assessment resilience engineering, RAG, Cyber-socio-technical systems, Security culture, Emergency response preparedness, Cyber incident, Cyber security.



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