How Defense Contractors can move from Cybersecurity to Cyber resilience

Source: HELPNET

How defense contractors can move from cybersecurity to cyber resilience

As the world’s most powerful military and economic power, the United States also holds another, less impressive distinction: Cyber threat actors target the US more than any other country in the world.

In 2022 alone, the FBI received more than 800,000 cybercrime-related complaints, with losses totaling over $10 billion, according to the agency’s latest Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) report — a leap of $3.4 billion from the previous year. As cybercriminals grow in sophistication, the rate and severity of attacks are expected to only increase. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Cybersecurity Outlook, 86% of business leaders and an even higher percentage of cyber leaders, 93%, believe a catastrophic cyber event is likely in the next two years due to global geopolitical instability.

For defense contractors, who work with some of our country’s most sensitive information, establishing effective cybersecurity protocols takes on an added layer of importance. Having that information accessed and exploited by malicious actors could have far-reaching effects that include endangering our national security.

While the US federal government has been in perpetual rulemaking on the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program, it continues to require Department of Defense contractors to meet a series of cybersecurity requirements through contract clauses. In addition, it has continued to boost funding for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to a proposed $3.1 billion for FY2024. These well-intentioned efforts fail to grasp the extent of the danger we face. In fact, CMMC regulations themselves might actually be contributing to the problem.rs target the US more than any other country in the world.

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