At the Cyber Readiness Institute, our mission is simple: empower small and medium-sized enterprises with free tools and resources to help them become more secure and resilient. When we’re all cyber ready, we’re all cyber strong.
The Cyber Readiness Institute (CRI) brings together the expertise of senior executive leaders at global companies – including Mastercard, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, Principal Financial Group, General Motors, PSP Partners, and the Center for Global Enterprise – to develop free resources to improve the cyber readiness of small and medium-sized enterprises to secure global value chains.
We need to quite honestly simplify best practices for small businesses. Part of the process in convening leadership is to converge their ideas and come up with an approach that applies to SMBs.
The Cyber Readiness Institute was launched July 2017 by senior leaders in government, industry, and cybersecurity serving on the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, including the Commissioners and the Executive Director. This independent, bipartisan Commission was tasked in 2016 to develop recommendations for securing the digital economy and provide a roadmap for the incoming Administration.
The objective of CRI was to follow-up on the recommendations of the Commission Report, with a specific focus on providing prescriptive, accessible, and free content and tools to improve the resilience and readiness of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to secure global value chains.
The Center for Global Enterprise (CGE) is a research institution devoted to the study of global management best practices, the contemporary corporation and their impact on society.
CRI’s Cyber Readiness Program is designed to be clear and accessible for SMEs regardless of size, technical expertise, and sector. Designed in collaboration with cyber experts from leading organizations, the Program focuses on human behavior, embedding basic cyber policies and processes into an organization. It also recognizes that organizations must work within their resources to advance cyber capabilities and may not be able to hire new people with the right skills to manage the risk.
The Program guides a designated Cyber Readiness Leader through five stages to help develop and implement cyber readiness policies. CRI’s Program takes the mystery out of what to do and when to do it. The Leader has access to CRI’s library of resources and tools available in each stage to help establish a culture of cyber readiness. From posters to policy templates and training materials, Cyber Leaders have everything they need to engage their workforce and build a cyber ready organization. The Program only requires a few short weeks and very limited technical expertise to complete.
The Cyber Readiness Program focuses on four primary issues that have the greatest impact on an enterprise’s cybersecurity: authentication and passwords, software updates, phishing, and USB use. Additionally, the Program helps SME leadership prioritize functions that should go to the cloud, a necessary step to creating a more secure environment for some applications. A template for a Cyber Incident Response Plan is also provided that companies can customize.
