What is the Difference Between Cyber Security and Cyber Resilience? 

When it comes to the digital security of your business two terms often get used interchangeably: cyber security and cyber resilience. 

But aren’t these the same thing? No.

Cyber security is about preventing attacks, reducing vulnerabilities, and putting the right controls in place to protect users, devices, identities, systems and data. 

Cyber resilience is broader. It is about ensuring that your business can continue operating, recover quickly, and limit damage if something was to happen. 

In simple terms, cyber security helps you stop incidents. Cyber resilience helps you withstand them.  

That distinction matters because even businesses that believe that they are protected from cyber attacks have been targeted and struggled to recover. In 2025 major cyber attacks impacted Marks & Spencer, Co-Op, Harrods, Jaguar Land Rover and others which took each brand weeks & months to recover from.

The UK Government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025 found that 50% of UK businesses reported experiencing a cyber security breach or attack in the previous 12 months. Additionally, IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report put the global average cost of a breach at USD 4.44 million. For businesses, this means that cyber defence is about more than just the security tools they use. It has to include business continuity, recovery, governance, compliance and operational resilience too. 

What is Cyber Security? 

Sounds like a simple thing doesn’t it? It’s something that keeps you secure from cyber attacks. Many businesses think “I have Anti-Virus, so I have Cyber Security”, but the reality is far from that. Cyber Security is more than just one single tool, it is a collection of tools, technologies, controls and processes that are designed to monitor, detect and protect your business from evolving and increasing cyber threats.

The purpose of cyber security is to provide a multi-layered holistic approach that will heavily reduce the likelihood that even the most experienced and determined cyber criminals could compromise your systems, providing active monitoring and proactive defence on the systems your business rely on every day. The NCSC describes cyber security as reducing both the risk and the impact of cyber criminals, while NIST explains that modern security models such as Zero Trust move protection away from a single network perimeter and instead focus on users, assets and resources. 

For most businesses, cyber security means having the right foundational tools and advanced controls in place across your entire business environment. But what does this include?

Advanced Endpoint Detection & Response

It includes Endpoint Detection and Response to identify malicious behaviour on laptops, desktops and servers, and a Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) capability to monitor alerts, investigate threats and support rapid response. 

Zero Trust Device & Network Security

Zero Trust Device Security and Zero Trust Network Security. Rather than assuming any user, device or connection is trustworthy simply because it is inside the network, Zero Trust continuously verifies identity, device health, access context and risk before allowing access. In practice, that means secure device compliance policies, conditional access, segmentation, least privilege, secure remote connectivity and continuous verification. This is also where Zero Trust Network Security becomes increasingly important, combining networking and security controls in a cloud-delivered model that better supports hybrid work, office locations and cloud-first businesses.

Email Security 

Email remains one of the biggest entry points for cyber criminals targeting businesses, as such, Active Email Threat Protection is another essential layer. Threat actors continue to use increasingly complex phishing attacks, malicious links, compromised suppliers, malware and social engineering to get into organisations. The UK’s 2025 Cyber Security Breaches Survey shows that phishing remains the most common type of breach or attack for businesses.  

With the users of your business being the most vulnerable part of your cyber defence strategy also means building security around user identity & security, not just devices. 

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Multi-Factor Authentication reduces the risk of account compromise, with the NCSC specifically recommending stronger MFA methods that offer better protection against phishing. From April 2026 Cyber Essentials now mandates that Multi-Factor Authentication must be enabled for all cloud services which offer it.

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Single Sign-On to simplify secure access and improve control over login policies.  

Identity & Access Management

Identity and Access Management helps organisations control who can access what, when, and under which conditions. Privileged Identity Management (PIM) and Privileged Access Management (PAM) are particularly important because they govern data and administrative access and give visibility and control over user accounts that attackers often target first. Microsoft states that PIM enables organisations to manage, control and monitor privileged access, while PAM is designed to protect critical resources from unauthorised privileged activity. 

Put simply, cyber security is about making sure the right tools and controls exist, that they are configured properly for your unique business environment and the tools in which you use, and that they work together across the business. It is the defensive architecture that reduces exposure, risk, and makes successful attacks less likely.

Together, these tools and controls create a practical and modern security foundation.

What is Cyber Resilience?

Cyber resilience builds upon cyber security controls by integrating them into your wider business continuity and disaster recovery strategy. It recognises that even strong protection cannot guarantee prevention every time. The human element is the most vulnerable part of your cyber strategy and you users can be tricked. Systems can fail. A supplier can be compromised. A zero-day vulnerability can be targeted before it is patched. Resilience is the ability to prepare for the worst, continue operating through it where possible, and recover quickly, safely and securely afterwards. 

The NCSC has increasingly emphasised that resilience matters as much as defence, particularly as businesses face more sophisticated and more persistent threats every year.

This is where business context becomes critical, ensuring that your tools are tailored to your unique business environment. Two businesses can buy the exact same security tools, but their requirements, industry, operational capacity and resilience requirements may be completely different. 

Example

A manufacturing business may need to prioritise operational uptime and production systems. A law firm may need to focus on identity security, client confidentiality and rapid document recovery. A multi-site organisation may need secure failover between locations. A leadership team handling regulated or sensitive data may need tighter privileged access controls, stronger retention policies and clearly rehearsed incident response playbooks.

Cyber resilience means tailoring security tools and strategies to the real environment that your business operates in. It means understanding your people, your industry, your supply chain, your remote working model, your operational dependencies and your tolerance for downtime.

Disaster Recovery is another major component of becoming Cyber Resilient and is an essential part of your wider Business Continuity Strategy. That means knowing which systems you require most, how long the business can tolerate downtime, how often your data is backed up, if you have Immutable Backups, what the recovery path looks like, and who is responsible for each decision during a major incident. It includes documented recovery objectives, incident response plans, communication plans, testing and review to ensure that you can recover in a timely manner.

Ask yourself, what is the difference to your business between 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month of downtime?

It also means accepting that technology alone is not enough. Governance, compliance, user awareness, leadership decision-making, third-party risk, crisis communications and disaster recovery planning all play a critical role in how well your business responds under pressure. 

A resilient business does not just ask, “Are we protected?” It also asks, “If this system fails, what happens next?”, “How quickly can we recover?”, and “Can the business still function while the issue is being contained or fixed?”.

Cyber Security vs Cyber Resilience: What is the real difference?

Cyber security and cyber resilience are not competing ideas. They are two parts of the same strategy. The clearest way to separate the two is this;

Cyber security is focused on protection. 

Cyber resilience is focused on protection, continuity and recovery.

Cyber security asks whether you have the right controls in place. 

Cyber resilience asks whether those controls are aligned to your business, whether they support your operational priorities, and whether you can continue to function if an incident still gets through.

Cyber security is often tool-led. 

Cyber resilience is outcome-led.

Cyber security is essential, but on its own it can create a false sense of confidence. Buying products does not automatically make a business secure, and it certainly does not make it resilient.  

If your backups are encrypted, if your leadership team does not know how to respond during an incident, if access rights are too broad, or if your disaster recovery strategies have never been tested, then a technically well-protected business may still be operationally fragile.

Cyber Resilience is the strategic layer of your business continuity strategy that ensures cyber security investments are aligned to business risk and real-world recovery requirements.

Businesses that perform best are usually the ones that invest in both. They deploy the right tools, but they also align them to business priorities and goals. They reduce risk, but they also prepare for failure. They protect user and client identities, devices, networks and email, while also maintaining immutable backups, tested recovery plans and leadership-level visibility of cyber risk in line with industry and national compliance standards.

That is the difference between appearing secure and being genuinely prepared.

How TwentyFour IT Services helps businesses strengthen their Cyber Strategies? 

At TwentyFour IT Services, we believe businesses need more than a list of security products. They need a holistic approach that combines the right protections (tailored to their unique business) with a resilience and recovery strategy built around how the business actually operates.

This means ensuring businesses implement practical Cyber Security controls such as Multi-Factor Authentication, Single Sign-On, Active Endpoint Detection and Response, Cyber Security Operations Centre Monitoring, Zero Trust Endpoint and Network security, Identity Access Management, Active Email Threat Protection and more, while also making sure those services are configured around the unique needs of the business, its people, locations, systems, industry requirements, national compliance standards, and a business’ growth strategy.

It means taking resilience seriously through a robust disaster recovery and business continuity strategy. That includes resilient immutable backups, disaster recovery planning, recovery priorities, incident readiness, and the wider governance around cyber security strategies.

For senior leaders, the real objective is not simply to buy more security. It is to create a business that is harder to breach, quicker to recover, and better prepared to keep operating when the unexpected happens.

If your business is reviewing its cyber strategy, it is essential to remember that Cyber Security is only a part of your wider business strategy and that you also need to be Cyber Resilient against any and all potential dangers.