Cybersecurity and Digital Resilience
The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Cyber and digital resilience is the capacity of organizations and societies to anticipate, withstand, recover from and adapt to adverse events in digital systems, whether those events are attacks, failures or errors. The field joins computer security, cryptography, software and reliability engineering, network science and organizational studies. It matters because essential services, from electricity to healthcare, now depend on digital systems that few people can see.
The interactive map needs JavaScript; the layer list and sources are below.
Layers 3
Connected activity, for this page
Keyboard, with the map focused
Hold Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll to zoom
Latest available
NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
Loading the latest NASA imagery.
Drag to move. Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, pinch or the buttons to zoom; hover for the values under the pointer; reset returns to the region.
For field overview, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on night lights, population density and true-colour imagery with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on Europe; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
Layers and dates
GeographyFor field overview, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on night lights, population density and true-colour imagery with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on Europe; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.
The Cybersecurity and Digital Resilience field covers security, reliability and continuity of cyber-dependent services, devices and institutions. Experts in it study questions such as cyber risk management and critical service cyber, with methods such as cybersecurity and cryptography as well as software and safety-critical systems engineering. Its counterparts at GRF and GRA look at the same systems through governance and finance.
Fig.How GCRI, GRF and GRA share one field while the authorities decide. Design, not a record.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Early security practice focused on keeping attackers out. Resilience accepts that some compromises and failures will happen and asks how services continue and recover.
Secure design, patching, access control, encryption and network segmentation reduce the chance and impact of compromise.
Monitoring and anomaly detection find intrusions and failures before they spread.
Planned roles, playbooks and communication limit harm during an incident.
Backups, rebuild procedures and after-action review restore service and improve defences.
Digital incidents have halted hospital services, disrupted fuel distribution, interrupted payments and exposed the personal data of large populations. Because many services share the same cloud platforms, software and identity systems, one weakness can affect many sectors at once. The consequences fall unevenly: smaller organizations and public bodies often have the least capacity to defend and recover.
The field also faces structural change. Operational technology in industry and utilities is increasingly connected; artificial intelligence changes both attack and defence; and the expected arrival of quantum computers capable of breaking current public-key cryptography requires a long migration that must begin before the threat is real.
Which assets, vulnerabilities and controls matter most. See cyber risk management and identity and data security.
How digital failure becomes physical or social harm. See critical service cyber and information operations.
Where concentration creates shared risk. See cloud and third parties and supply chain security.
How to restore services and prepare for change. See incident response and recovery and post-quantum migration.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Operational technology | Hardware and software that monitor and control physical devices and processes. |
| Ransomware | Malicious software that encrypts an organisation's data or systems and demands payment to restore them. |
| Post-quantum cryptography | Cryptographic algorithms designed to resist attacks by both classical and quantum computers. |
| Systemic risk | Risk arising from the interactions and dependencies within and between systems, where a shock can propagate and threaten the functioning of the whole. |
Cyber resilience underpins Critical Infrastructure, Digital Public Infrastructure and Data and Compute at The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI). It is governed through dialogue at AI and Digital Governance and Disaster and Crisis Governance at The Global Risks Forum (GRF), and its financial dimension is studied at Financial Cyber and Operational Resilience at The Global Risks Alliance (GRA). See dependencies and consequences.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.