—ID.BE-5: Business Environment

Oct 21

1. Introduction

This guide focuses on the NIST Cybersecurity Framework control ID.BE-5: Business Environment, which states: "Resilience requirements to support delivery of critical services are established for all operating states (e.g. under duress/attack, during recovery, normal operations)." This control is crucial for ensuring that an organization can maintain its critical services under various conditions, including during cyberattacks or other disruptive events.

2. Understanding ID.BE-5: Business Environment

2.1 Control Objective

To define and implement resilience requirements that ensure the continued delivery of critical services across all operating states, including normal operations, under attack, and during recovery.

2.2 Implementation Guidance

Organizations should identify their critical services, determine the required level of resilience for each, and implement measures to meet these requirements across different operating scenarios.

3. Roles and Responsibilities

3.1 For Management

Define resilience objectives for critical services
Allocate resources for implementing resilience measures
Ensure alignment between resilience strategies and business goals
Approve and support resilience plans and investments

Best Practice: Implement a resilience steering committee that includes representatives from various departments to ensure comprehensive coverage of resilience requirements.

3.2 For Analysts

Conduct business impact analyses to determine resilience requirements
Analyze threats and vulnerabilities that could impact service delivery
Develop metrics to measure resilience across different operating states
Provide regular reports on resilience performance and gaps

Tool Recommendation: Utilize business continuity management software like Fusion Framework System or Archer Business Continuity Management to track and analyze resilience requirements and capabilities.

3.3 For Engineers

Design and implement technical solutions to meet resilience requirements
Develop redundancy and failover mechanisms for critical systems
Create and maintain disaster recovery environments
Implement monitoring systems to detect and respond to disruptions

Technical Consideration: Implement chaos engineering practices to proactively test and improve system resilience.

3.4 For Auditors

Review resilience requirements for completeness and appropriateness
Assess the effectiveness of implemented resilience measures
Evaluate alignment between resilience capabilities and defined requirements
Verify compliance with relevant standards and regulations

Audit Checklist: Develop a comprehensive audit checklist covering resilience requirements, implementation, testing, and continuous improvement.

4. Implementing ID.BE-5

4.1 Identifying Resilience Requirements

Identify critical services and their acceptable downtime
Determine recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO)
Assess the impact of various disruption scenarios
Define performance requirements under different operating states
Establish resilience requirements for supporting infrastructure and dependencies

Management Tool: Use a resilience requirements matrix to document and prioritize requirements across different services and operating states.

4.2 Implementing Resilience Measures

Develop redundancy and high availability solutions for critical systems
Implement data backup and recovery mechanisms
Establish alternate processing sites or cloud-based recovery solutions
Develop and test incident response and disaster recovery plans
Implement cybersecurity measures to protect against attacks

Implementation Tip: Adopt a defense-in-depth approach, implementing multiple layers of controls to enhance overall resilience.

4.3 Testing and Continuous Improvement

Conduct regular resilience tests and exercises
Perform post-incident reviews to identify improvement areas
Regularly update resilience requirements based on changing business needs and threat landscape
Implement a continuous improvement process for resilience measures
Conduct periodic third-party assessments of resilience capabilities

Analytical Tool: Use scenario planning and simulation tools to assess and improve resilience strategies.

5. Technical Implementations

5.1 For Engineers

Implement automated failover and load balancing systems
Develop self-healing mechanisms for critical applications
Create dashboards for real-time monitoring of service health and resilience metrics

Code Example: Here's a simple Python script to check system resilience by testing critical service availability:

python

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import requests import time def check_service_resilience(services, test_duration, interval): results = {service: {'total': 0, 'successful': 0} for service in services} end_time = time.time() + test_duration while time.time() < end_time: for service, url in services.items(): try: response = requests.get(url, timeout=5) results[service]['total'] += 1 if response.status_code == 200: results[service]['successful'] += 1 except requests.RequestException: results[service]['total'] += 1 time.sleep(interval) for service, data in results.items(): availability = (data['successful'] / data['total']) * 100 if data['total'] > 0 else 0 print(f"{service} Availability: {availability:.2f}%") # Sample usage critical_services = { "Web Application": "https://app.example.com/health", "API Gateway": "https://api.example.com/status", "Database Service": "https://db.example.com/ping" } check_service_resilience(critical_services, test_duration=300, interval=5)

5.2 For Analysts

Develop predictive models to forecast potential resilience issues
Create visualizations of resilience performance across different operating states
Implement anomaly detection algorithms to identify unusual patterns that may impact resilience

Analytical Technique: Use statistical process control (SPC) to monitor and analyze resilience metrics over time, identifying trends and out-of-control situations.

6. Compliance and Legal Considerations

Ensure that resilience measures comply with relevant regulations (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, financial regulations)
Consider data protection and privacy requirements when implementing resilience solutions
Review and update service level agreements (SLAs) to reflect resilience requirements
Maintain documentation of resilience measures and testing for regulatory audits

Notable Event: In 2019, a major US bank was fined $75 million by regulators for failing to implement adequate disaster recovery capabilities, highlighting the importance of meeting resilience requirements.

7. Challenges and Best Practices

7.1 Challenges

Balancing resilience investments with other business priorities
Ensuring resilience across complex, interconnected systems and third-party dependencies
Keeping pace with evolving threats and changing business requirements
Managing resilience in cloud and hybrid environments

7.2 Best Practices

Adopt a risk-based approach to prioritize resilience investments
Implement a formal resilience management program
Integrate resilience considerations into the system development lifecycle
Conduct regular resilience awareness training for all employees
Establish partnerships with key vendors and suppliers to enhance overall resilience

Management Strategy: Implement a resilience scorecard to track and communicate resilience performance across the organization.

8. Measuring Effectiveness

8.1 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Percentage of critical services meeting defined resilience requirements
Mean Time To Recover (MTTR) for critical services
Number of successful failover tests conducted
Percentage of resilience tests passed
Reduction in unplanned downtime for critical services

8.2 For Auditors

Review documentation of resilience requirements and implemented measures
Assess the results of resilience tests and exercises
Evaluate the process for updating resilience requirements and capabilities
Verify that resilience measures are adequately addressed in risk management plans

Audit Tool: Use resilience assessment frameworks like the CERT Resilience Management Model (CERT-RMM) to evaluate organizational resilience capabilities.

9. Recent Developments and Future Trends

Increasing adoption of AI and machine learning for predictive resilience management
Growing focus on cyber resilience in response to evolving cyber threats
Rise of resilience orchestration platforms for automated incident response
Emerging emphasis on human factors and organizational resilience

News Item: In 2021, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack highlighted the critical importance of operational resilience in critical infrastructure, leading many organizations to reevaluate their approach to cybersecurity and business continuity.

10. Conclusion

Effective implementation of NIST ID.BE-5 is crucial for ensuring that an organization can maintain its critical services under various operating conditions, including during cyberattacks or other disruptive events. By establishing clear resilience requirements and implementing appropriate measures, organizations can enhance their ability to withstand, adapt to, and recover from adverse events.

Jeremy Pickett

—ID.BE-5: Business Environment