"With the increasing threat of cyberattacks, every organization must implement adequate measures to ensure the security of its infrastructure, systems, and data integrity. However, in the current context of hyper-connectivity of systems, it is becoming increasingly difficult to guard against cyberattacks. Therefore, it is no longer a question of whether or not we could be victims of an attack, but rather, are we capable of facing it when it occurs while ensuring a timely business recovery? This is what is referred to as cyber resilience.

Cyber resilience is a pragmatic approach that requires a shift in organizations' perception of security. While cybersecurity focuses on improving an organization's ability to detect and prevent cyberattacks, cyber resilience covers a broader spectrum; it involves improving remediation and business continuity capabilities.

Another aspect of cyber resilience is designing and implementing robust systems capable of quickly organizing against new threats. As attacks become increasingly intelligent and come in various, unpredictable forms, it is essential to establish adaptive mechanisms based on continuous risk assessment processes.

The concept of cyber resilience is increasingly highlighted by specific frameworks for protecting critical infrastructures, such as the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) framework developed by the United States. Indeed, critical sectors are now preferred targets for attackers given the stakes involved. The financial sector is one of the most illustrative examples, as evidenced by the annual losses of financial institutions attributable to cyberattacks, estimated at nearly one hundred billion dollars according to a modeling conducted in 2018 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Therefore, this institution recommends moving towards better mastery of means to strengthen the resilience of financial institutions and infrastructures, to both reduce the likelihood of successful cyberattacks and facilitate a quick and smooth recovery of activities.

Today, it is also essential for national actors to integrate cyber resilience into their operational strategies to be better prepared to face cyber threats. In this regard, several actions have been undertaken by the Directorate General of Information Systems Security (DGSSI) to strengthen the resilience of national information systems. These include:

Strengthening the resilience of the national Internet, the main medium ensuring interconnection between the systems of all actors, both public and private. In this regard, technical studies and projects have been conducted in partnership with ANRT to secure BGP and DNS protocols and establish autonomous systems;
Protection of sensitive information systems of critical infrastructures through the implementation of directives and regulatory mechanisms for the control and monitoring of security incidents; Improving crisis management and major cyber event handling through the establishment and operation of an inter-ministerial cyber crisis management system.
Moreover, in continuation of the initiative led by DGSSI for the deployment of Security Operations Centers (SOC) within public entities and Critical Infrastructures to provide them with their own monitoring capabilities, today there is an emphasis on further enhancing the resilience of their internal systems. This involves managing security by adopting an approach that involves individuals, processes, and technology to strengthen the five pillars of cyber resilience:

Preparation by identifying essential business information, its location, vulnerability level, and risk tolerance;
Protection by implementing protection measures for critical infrastructures and services to limit the impact of an attack;
Detection by establishing adequate means to continuously monitor internal security events and correlate them with external threats;
Remediation by defining clear procedures to follow in case of an incident and establishing intervention teams with predefined roles and responsibilities;

Finally, recovery by implementing appropriate systems and plans to restore data and services that may have been impacted.

In this context, DGSSI is organizing the 6th edition of its annual awareness seminar under the theme: "Cyber Resilience: A New Approach to Address the Cyber Risk Challenge." The objective is to present the various aspects related to this concept, as well as approaches and experiences allowing the construction of a cyber-resilient ecosystem.

The seminar will take place on October 30, 2018, at the Bank Al Maghrib Club. Directors of information systems and information systems security managers from administrations, public bodies, and Critical Infrastructures will be invited.

Three sessions, led by national and international experts and DGSSI officials, will be featured in this seminar, two of which will focus on defining the concept of cyber resilience and its implementation. The third session will be a case study on cyber resilience in the financial sector, conducted in partnership with the central bank."