The Last Line of Defense: Cyber Continuity Engineering

What will happen after a disastrous software failure or destructive cyberattack to your systems? Will service be restored quickly; can damage to stakeholders and customers be limited; will your organisation learn from the experience? We make a case for software professionals to engineer for ‘cyber continuity’ in addition to cybersecurity and reliability: identifying functionality and process improvements that, for appropriately low upfront cost, will limit the damage in the event of a disaster. We explore relevant literature and analyze how existing EU legislation is starting to require this of professionals. Using short case study examples, we propose four principles for software designers as first elements in a framework for cyber continuity engineering.