For many organisations, cybersecurity is still seen as a matter of digital housekeeping. Update the antivirus, rotate the passwords, tick the compliance boxes, and the job is done. It’s the corporate equivalent of washing your hands before dinner - important, certainly, but hardly existential.
And yet, when the near inevitable breach arrives - a ransomware attack that locks critical systems, a quiet intrusion that siphons off sensitive data, or even a denial-of-service assault that brings operations to a halt - all of that tidy hygiene work suddenly feels inadequate. Clean systems don’t matter much if the business can’t function.
The truth is that cybersecurity should never have been treated as IT hygiene. It is not a side task for the IT department. It is a fundamental part of business continuity.
Compliance vs real security
Regulations and standards have encouraged a compliance-driven mindset. Organisations often equate passing an audit with being safe. But compliance is only a baseline, not a guarantee. It creates the appearance of security without necessarily providing the substance.
This ‘hygiene’ perspective is dangerous because it implies that cybersecurity is something you can finish, a checklist to be completed and filed away. In reality, threats are dynamic, evolving daily. Security isn’t a certificate on the wall; it is the ongoing ability to keep the organisation running under pressure.
Preparing for the inevitable
It is tempting to view cyberattacks as rare or wholly avoidable, but history tells a different story. The average time attackers spend inside a network before being discovered is still measured in months, not days. Even organisations that are fully compliant with regulations find themselves victims.
What matters most is not whether an attack can be stopped, as sometimes it cannot, but whether the organisation can continue to function when it happens. Just as businesses plan for fires, floods, or supply chain failures, they must also plan for cyber disruption as though it’s an inevitability.
Building resilience
Resilience is what separates survival from collapse. Consider backups: it is not enough to have them, they must be tested, verified, and recoverable under stress. Consider incident response: plans should not gather dust tucked away somewhere but rather be regularly rehearsed until they are demonstrably fit for purpose.
Most importantly, resilience must be understood at the leadership level. A board that treats cybersecurity as a line item in the IT budget misunderstands the risk. Downtime can halt revenue streams, damage reputation beyond repair, and in cases such as healthcare, put lives at risk. The responsibility cannot be delegated downwards. Leaders themselves must own resilience.
Lessons from real incidents
If that seems abstract, recent history shows just how costly these lessons can be.
The global shipping company Maersk survived the NotPetya attack in 2017, but only after an immense effort to rebuild systems from a single surviving backup server in Ghana. Maersk’s scale, resources and luck allowed them to recover, but at a cost of hundreds of millions. Smaller firms would likely have closed their doors.
The NHS during the WannaCry outbreak faced cancelled operations, diverted ambulances, and patients placed in danger. It served as a stark reminder that the impact of cyber disruption is not confined to balance sheets.
These examples underline a simple truth: preparedness, not compliance, is what keeps organisations alive.
A new mindset to cybersecurity
If cybersecurity is to serve as a pillar of business continuity, organisations must change the way they think. The new mindset is not ‘if’ but ‘when.’ That requires:
- Practical resilience measures such as tested backups and incident response drills.
- Architectures that assume compromise, such as zero trust.
- Considered use of cyber insurance, without mistaking it for a plan.
- Leadership involvement, with boards recognising cyber resilience as an existential responsibility, not a technical detail.
Cybersecurity hygiene has its place, but it is only the beginning. Real security is measured in resilience: the ability to absorb a blow and keep going. It is the quiet strength that ensures the organisation continues to serve its customers, protect its people, and safeguard its reputation, even when systems are under attack.
This is not IT housekeeping. It’s business continuity. When disruption arrives, continuity will be the only measure that counts.
