November 12, 2008 — While cyber threats to businesses continue to grow, many organizations do not fully understand how to manage those threats or how to adequately respond.

Resilience — the ability to recover quickly from an unforeseen event such as a cyber attack — is emerging as a key business objective that could help shore up companies' cyber-security efforts and their long-term economic health.  

A University of Virginia research center is partnering with a national consortium and a leading cyber security center to introduce the business community to this new approach to cyber security.

"What Businesses Need to Know about Harmonizing Resilience and Cyber Security" will be held Nov. 19 and 20 at U.Va.'s Darden School of Business. The workshop is being presented by U.Va.'s Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems, along with the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection and the Software Engineering Institute.

"Today's businesses operate in a world where breached networks and stolen or corrupted data are becoming commonplace," said Barry Horowitz, chairman of U.Va.'s Department of Systems Information and Engineering and co-chairman of the workshop. "The aftermath of these intrusions can be destructive to a business if the proper systems of resilience are not put in place ahead of time.

"We are reaching out to the business community with what we believe are valuable lessons in how to prepare and recover in the event of a cyber attack."

The workshop, designed for leaders in business, government and academia interested in security strategies and business resilience, will delve into how cyber security works; why resiliency is needed; methods, assessments and decision support tools to build resilience; and strategies for recovery that meet acceptable time and cost constraints. 

This workshop also will help businesses leverage operational resilience to decrease overall cyber risk; harness multiple resources — hardware, software, business processes and human resources — to harden systems; and better understand the benefits, costs and trade-offs of investing in cyber security.

Keynote addresses will be given by Rod Beckstrom, director of the National Cybersecurity Center at the Department of Homeland Security; Phil Venables, chief information security officer for Goldman Sachs; and Robert Crouch, assistant to Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine for commonwealth preparedness.

Registration fee is $100.  You can register online.

For information, contact Erika Evans at: 434-924-0960 or eevans@virginia.edu.