Source: securityboulevard.com – Author: Lohrmann on Cybersecurity
Recent cyber attacks have given a new urgency to business resiliency in the public and private sectors. Let’s explore the problem and some workable answers.
June 01, 2025 •
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In her award-winning book The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart, Astra Taylor makes the argument that everyone feels insecure.
The book’s description discusses our cultural challenges this way: “We are financially stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. The status quo isn’t working for anyone, even those who appear to have it all. What is going on?
“In this urgent cultural diagnosis, author and activist Astra Taylor exposes how seemingly disparate crises ― rising inequality and declining mental health, the ecological emergency, and the threat of authoritarianism ― originate from a social order built on insecurity. From home ownership and education to the wellness industry and policing, many of the institutions and systems that promise to make us more secure actually undermine us.”
You can learn more about Taylor’s perspective in this interview.
MORE INSECURITY EXAMPLES
There are plenty of recent examples of insecurity in the news. Here are a few:
Financial Times ran an story entitled “Welcome to the age of cyber insecurity in business.” The article discussed the dramatic impacts that resulted from the recent Marks & Spencer (M&S) data breach. Here’s an excerpt:
“It says something about our acute dependence on online commerce that the only way to circumvent a cyber attack was by hacking the store in another way. If only the rest of the technological answer were so simple for M&S: five weeks later, the food and clothing retail chain faces a £300mn hit to operating profits, and online clothes sales remain suspended.
“M&S food stores are mostly well stocked again after gaps appeared on shelves, but the struggle to rebuild its operations continues behind the scenes, and could take until July to be completed. As another business victim of a ransomware attack said of the experience: ‘What we weren’t ready for was what is essentially vandalism.’
“Welcome to the age of cyber insecurity. A Scottish law firm that has launched the inevitable class action suit against M&S for allowing some customer data to leak denounced its failure as ‘unacceptable’. But accept it we must, or at least face the reality that companies and organisations cannot guarantee they will block all hackers who are intent on causing havoc.”
The article goes on to discuss the devastating impacts from the attacks, but ends with good news as to how the store, despite serious impacts, has been resilient and will survive.
Other articles offer more details on the cyber attack, and one provides lessons on how to be resilient and learn from this situation. Here are the five lessons they offer.
“1. Invest in brand resilience before crisis strikes: As Lewis [Jones] puts it, ‘Trust isn’t built in a single moment. It’s the result of years of consistent investment in the brand and the development of well-managed brand systems across the entire business.’
“2. Maintain authentic communication: Charlotte [Black] emphasises that brands must communicate in line with their established values and voice. ‘Defining and living up to brand values and having a clear voice with an adaptable tone is how brands weather these sorts of storms,’ she reasons.
“3. Deploy transparency as a strategic tool: Lewis highlights how the delivery of information in a crisis is critical: ‘This is where brand values, expression, and UX come into their own.’ So, clear, accessible, and empathetic communication about what happened, what the company is doing about it, and how customers might be affected is essential.
“4. Acknowledge the impact on customers: It’s crucial to recognise and address customer frustrations directly. Sue [Benson] notes how ‘with online sales still paused after 17 days, customer frustration is rising. M&S must not rest on its laurels’.
“5. Use crisis as a catalyst for improvement: Dave [Mayer] suggests that recovery should include not just fixing the immediate problem but strengthening the brand’s overall value proposition. For M&S, this means considering ‘new ways to not only be loved but also provide products and services that shoppers can’t get anywhere else’.”
“While we do not yet know all the facts of the recent M&S cyber-attacks, they have provided yet another example of the costs of a business-as-usual approach to cybersecurity. Thankfully, through resources such as the Cyber Resilience Compass, organisations are also equipped with practical examples of how to adapt their approach in a complex and evolving environment.
“In today’s digitally-dependent world, cyber resilience should not be seen as an ideal, but as an organisational imperative. Businesses must assume that they will be the next victim of a significant cyber incident, and leaders should act to prepare for, absorb, respond to, and learn from incidents accordingly. If they do not, then it is only a matter of when they will be the next cautionary headline, not if.”
A CYBER SILVER LINING
The cyber industry has been preaching awareness for decades, and the resiliency theme is also more than a decade old. These are not new concepts.
However, these recent high-profile cyber attacks against well-known retailers provide a new urgency to resiliency-focused perspectives on recovering from inevitable cyber attacks.
While it is true that cyber insecurity is just a part of a much wider culture trend of insecurity in many areas of life, there is a silver lining here in the media coverage of these retailers and impacts to the bottom line.
Most of all, we have business-driven focus on the full life cycle of preparing for, reacting to and recovering from significant cyber breaches — whether ransomware or something else.
As Shamane Tan and I highlighted in the subtitle of the title of our book Cyber Mayday and the Day After, we all must be “preparing, managing, and recovering from inevitable business disruptions.”
So if insecurity is the new normal, resiliency is the passionate answer.
Daniel J. Lohrmann is an internationally recognized cybersecurity leader, technologist, keynote speaker and author.
See More Stories by Dan Lohrmann
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Lohrmann on Cybersecurity authored by Lohrmann on Cybersecurity. Read the original post at: https://www.govtech.com/blogs/lohrmann-on-cybersecurity/addressing-our-age-of-insecurity-in-cyber-too
Original Post URL: https://securityboulevard.com/2025/06/addressing-our-age-of-insecurity-in-cyber-too/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=addressing-our-age-of-insecurity-in-cyber-too
Category & Tags: Security Bloggers Network – Security Bloggers Network
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