7- Digital Resilience (D.R)

Question 1

What is digital resilience?

Answer 1

The ability of digital environments to withstand and recover from cyber attacks or hardware failures

Question 2

Why is it important to ensure digital environments are resilient?

Answer 2

We rely on digital systems for many aspects of our daily lives, including communication, banking, shopping, and learning.

Question 3

What are the impacts on organisations and stakeholders if digital resilience isn’t achieved?

Answer 3

Loss of critical business data and customer information due to hardware failures, human errors, or cyber attacks.

Significant financial loss due to costs to repair or replace damaged systems, and potential fines for not complying with regulations, affecting the business’s ability to invest in future growth and retain employees.

Reputation damage as customers and partners will lose trust in its ability to safeguard their data, leading to loss of business and long-term damage to the organisation’s brand and credibility.

Question 4

What methods are used to improve the resilience of digital environments?

Answer 4

Data and system redundancy

Back-up systems

Hot, cold and warm sites

Data back-up and recovery procedures

Device hardening

Question 5

What is data and system redundancy?

Answer 5

Creating multiple copies of data or systems to ensure reliability and availability during a failure or disaster

Question 6

What is hardware redundancy?

Answer 6

Duplicating hardware components, like servers and storage devices, to provide backup in case of a failure, so if one component fails, another can take over instantly

Question 7

What is software redundancy?

Answer 7

Duplicating software systems to ensure continuous operation and fault tolerance in case of failures or errors

Question 8

What are the benefits of data and system redundancy?

Answer 8

Improves fault tolerance because redundant systems continue to work even if other components stop working, ensuring reliability and efficiency.

Enhances data protection because if one copy is lost or corrupted, there are backups available, reducing the risk of data loss and increasing data reliability.

Question 9

What are the drawbacks of data and system redundancy?

Answer 9

It’s costly as duplicating hardware and software requires additional storage components.

management is difficult as they require all copies of data and components to be in sync so they all have the same information at the same time, preventing data loss and corruption.

Question 10

What are the benefits of back-up systems?

Answer 10

Data protection regularly copying important info reduces the chances of data loss during security breaches or hardware failures, ensuring data is still accessible even if something goes wrong.

Allows faster recovery and restoration of data and systems after a failure,
minimised downtime as organisations have copies of their data and systems stored securely which allows them to resume normal operations instantly

Question 11

What are the drawbacks of back-up systems?

Answer 11

Require large storage capacities as they store multiple copies of data, which accumulate over time.

Time-consuming to create and manage backups as it involves scheduling when they occur, ensuring they’re stored in the right place, and verifying the accuracy and reliability of the backup copies

Question 12

What are back-up systems?

Answer 12

Secondary copies of data, hardware components, or applications created on-site or off-site to restore information if it’s lost or damaged, providing redundancy and ensuring data availability in case of failures

Question 13

What are data backup and recovery procedures?

Answer 13

Regularly creating copies of important data and storing them securely in separate locations with a systematic process to restore the data when needed, protecting against data loss

Question 14

What are two benefits of data backup and recovery procedures?

Answer 14

Minimises data loss through copies of important data, so they can be used to restore lost data, ensuring critical data is still accessible, so business operations aren’t stopped.

Reduces downtime as backups are readily available, so organisations can quickly recover from hardware failures or security breaches, reducing the time taken to restore critical data.

Question 15

What are two drawbacks 🔙 of data backup and recovery procedures?

Answer 15

Resource-intensive as backing up large volumes of data requires lots of storage space, increasing operational costs as organisations have to invest in more storage to accommodate the growing volume of backup data through regular backups.

Complex to manage as backup tasks need to be scheduled across multiple systems, ensuring data integrity, and backup systems need to be regularly checked if they work well by people with expertise in backup technologies

Question 16

What is device hardening?

Answer 16

Strengthening the security of a device by reducing its vulnerability to security threats, through data encryption to protect against data breaches, and implementing strong authentication and access controls to prevent unauthorised access.

Question 17

What are two benefits of device hardening?

Answer 17

Enhances security by strengthening defenses against threats through measures like keeping software and firmware up-to-date to address known vulnerabilities, reducing the device’s vulnerability to exploitation.

It makes devices compliant to security standards and regulations, maintaining trust with stakeholders, and reducing the risk of penalties for non-compliance.

Question 18

What are two drawbacks of device hardening?

Answer 18

time and resource-intensive as it involves identifying and addressing vulnerabilities, applying security measures and more to ensure the device remains secure against potential threats.

Impacts performance as it involves implementing additional security, which slows down the device, affecting it’s performance and how well it runs certain programs.