By Corey Hulen
In 2023, victims reported nearly 900,000 cybercrime complaints to the FBI. Altogether, losses eclipsed $12.5 billion — a significant 22% increase from the losses in 2022.
Unsurprisingly, experts predict this trend will continue to grow as we move further into the future.
While any business is a potential target for hackers, critical infrastructure organizations — including defense, healthcare, energy, utilities, and financial services companies — are perhaps most at risk due to their financial resources. According to the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, attacks on critical infrastructure organizations increased 30% in 2023.
With cyberattacks becoming more frequent —and the associated impacts becoming increasingly difficult to absorb — it’s more important than ever for critical infrastructure organizations to invest in cyber resilience. As these organizations work to fortify their ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from cyberattacks while maintaining critical operations, we recommend four key ingredients that can help them safeguard their operations against evolving cyber threats.
I-Cross-functional collaboration
Cyber resilience isn’t possible when teams operate in silos. In fact, 59% of government leaders report that their inability to synthesize data across people, operations, and finances weakens organizational agility. To bolster cyber resilience, organizations must break down these siloes by fostering cross-departmental collaboration and making it as seamless as possible. Achieving this requires strategic investment in a triad of technologies:
•A customized, secure collaboration platform
•A project management tool like Asana, Trello, or Jira
•A knowledge-sharing solution like Confluence or Notion
Once these three foundational tools are in place, organizations should deploy the final piece of the puzzle: a dashboarding or reporting tool. These technologies can help IT leaders pinpoint any silos that exist and start figuring out how to break them down.
II-AI and automation
In today’s threat landscape, rapid detection and response to cyberattacks is essential. To build resilience, critical infrastructure organizations must invest in AI and automation to identify anomalies and potential threats faster than humans.
AI leverages predictive analytics to analyze vast amounts of data in real time, identifying patterns and predicting attacks before they occur. It also scans for vulnerabilities and proactively applies patches to secure critical infrastructure. Automation helps security teams contain threats faster by piping alerts into active incident response spaces (e.g., a dedicated channel in a collaboration platform), reducing context switching and improving focus.
Teams can also use checklist-based automation that trigger predefined incident response workflows, ensuring that incident response requirements are met while reducing human error, minimizing damage, and increasing team accountability.
III-A security-first mindset
Most organizations understand security’s importance but often treat it as an afterthought. To strengthen cyber resilience, organizations must adopt a security-first mindset, baking security into everything they do.
Too often, security teams are siloed from the rest of the organization; they’re roped in at the end when they should be fully integrated from the start.
Truly resilient organizations treat security as a shared responsibility, ensuring it’s part of every decision, project, and process. By encouraging collaboration between security teams and other business units, organizations can proactively identify risks, address vulnerabilities, and build cultures where security is prioritized at every level.
This shift minimizes potential threats but also empowers teams to protect critical assets together.
IV-Monitor, continuously learn
HulenNo matter how resilient your organization is today, you can always improve.
To bolster cyber resilience, organizations must embrace continuous learning. Post-mortems and after-action reports are particularly valuable. By analyzing incidents, identifying what went wrong, and understanding how to prevent similar issues in the future, organizations can turn setbacks into teaching moments.
For critical infrastructure organizations in particular, it’s not a question of “if” but “when” an attack will occur. When incidents happen, organizations must learn from their success and failures in order to improve decision-making moving forward and minimize damages.
Keeping pace
Cyber resilience is a continuous journey. As cyber threats evolve, critical infrastructure organizations must constantly adapt, learn, and improve their defenses. Failure to keep pace can have disastrous impacts–not only financially, but on society’s well-being.
Resilience isn’t about achieving security; it’s about withstanding attacks, recovering quickly, and emerging stronger—all while protecting mission-critical operations.
By deploying the right tools, embracing a security-first mindset, and committing to continuous improvement, critical infrastructure organizations can stay prepared —a boon to their bottom lines and the people they serve.
About the essayist: Corey Hulen is CEO and co-founder of Mattermost Federal, Inc., which supplies a collaboration platform for mission-critical work serving national security, government, and critical infrastructure enterprises, from the U.S. Department of Defense, to global tech giants, to utilities, banks and other vital services.
March 10th, 2025 | Guest Blog Post | Top Stories
