How to Prepare for the Cyber Disasters No One Can Prevent?

We at Lancaster and UCL are researching exactly this challenge. We shall identify and characterise practical ‘cyber continuity’ techniques, then develop training and workshop materials your teams can use. We can then support your software development teams—along with product management, operations and managers—in tailoring those techniques to your own software systems and company culture. We’ll also provide workshop materials and an optional interactive online support tool to help sustain ongoing cyber continuity work. Just ask us.

Interconnected computer systems underpin the success of modern organisations and play a crucial role in everyday life. Their power and ubiquity, however, mean that when something goes wrong—whether through a cyber attack as in the recent Jaguar Land Rover incident, or through accidental error as with the CrowdStrike outage—the consequences can be devastating. As a result, many organisations are now legally required to prepare for system failure, and many others are doing so proactively for the business resilience it provides.

Preparation often centres on management-level playbooks and simulations, yet there is enormous value in technical continuity practices as well. Examples include regular backup restores; implementing a ‘red button’ shutdown mechanism to limit cascading damage; or having multiple heterogeneous implementations. We have begun cataloguing these techniques and expect to uncover many more.

The Cyber Continuity research project explores these approaches by combining insights from business continuity, resilience engineering, and the lived experience of professionals who have managed or prepared for major failures. Our goal is to package this knowledge--extending it to cover multi-organisation failures—and deliver it in ways that help software professionals minimise the consequences of system failure. 

Every organisation and system is unique, so we shall not prescribe solutions; instead, we shall offer ideas and techniques your teams can adapt to their own context. 

The project will begin with a Delphi study, gathering and sharing insights with experts through an initial one-hour interview and a follow-up 30-minute session. We shall use the findings to create materials for educational workshops, deliverable both in person and online. We shall then deliver a 2-hour workshop with your development team(s) to support them in enhancing their cyber continuity strategy. An optional interactive online support tool will also be available to developers. All of this is free of charge.