This guest blog post comes from Ginger Hill, associate content editor at securitytoday.com and Security Products magazine.

As I sat in the classroom at GovSec West 2013 listening to Jeff Snyder, VP of cyber programs at Raytheon, talk about cyber threats and remediation, I quickly learned that we have no global laws to fight cyberterrorism. With the eroding economic viability of America, cyber threats are increasingly targeting critical infrastructures and major systems. The cyber criminal’s mentality is: why invent when you can simply steal?

According to Snyder, China is the number one threat when it comes to cyberterrorism as they have 1-2 million making up their human capital. With such a large number of people, China can carry out their cyber threats, making them into a “cyber reality.”

During his presentation, Snyder frequently brought up the term “cyber resiliency” as an essential part of any security strategy – on a personal, business or national level – to thwart cyberterrorism. Being able to take the hit from cyber terrorists without destroying your entire system and quickly recovering is the key strategy to fighting back. But how do we accomplish such a feat?

I’m going to take the viewpoint of a business and work in suggestions to develop your own personal cyber security plan.

The 3-Pronged Approach to Cyber Security

Dealing with cyber terrorists and cyberterrorism takes a thoroughly thought-out and developed plan, and the willingness to take immediate action, preferably before a terrorist event takes place. The following is a simplistic approach to cyber security:

1. Do whatever it takes to protect the infrastructure.
2. Invest to protect your products.
3. Protect your clients, including their personal data.

Be sure that your infrastructure, whether that is your personal computer, social media and online accounts or the multibillion-dollar waterworks station is protected. Start small. Make sure that all passwords are strong by incorporating capital and lower case letters, numbers and symbols in unlikely combinations. Invest in products that increase system security, like malware protection and virus detection, and use encryption to help protect your client’s personal information.

Taking security to a higher level, consider hiring an ethical hacker to attempt to gain access to your system, and patch any vulnerability immediately. Also consider insider threat monitoring to identify behaviors and anomalies with your system and to help meet human capital demands. It takes a lot of people to adequately protect an organization, just as it takes a large number of people to complete a cyber attack. Therefore, think like a cyber terrorist to beat them at their own game. They use technologies to achieve their terrorist goals, so follow suit and use ethical technologies to battle against their unethical acts and spread security as far as possible within your organization.

Surviving Cyberterrorism

Fighting back against highly sophisticated, intelligent cyber terrorists seems to be a no-win situation, but with the proper technologies, experts and the willingness to respond, exploitation can be minimized.

The following steps teach you exactly what to do before, during and after a cyberterrorism attack.

1. Anticipate cyber attacks: The question is not if cyber terrorists are going to attack, it’s when. Think about prevention strategies and what you can do now. Do not wait until you are attacked to do something about it because it will be too late.
2. Respond immediately to enhance business continuity: When attacked, the goal is to keep the business functioning as a cohesive unit at all times. This is possible if you have established your security plan and have practiced what to do before an attack rears its ugly head.
3. Monitor all systems in real time: Invest in technologies and experts to monitor your systems 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
4. Evolve: Never stop learning ways to survive cyber attacks, and always use each cyber attack as an educational tool to enhance your overall security plan.

Cyberterrorism is a 24/7, 365 days-a-year giant that never sleeps; it doesn’t need to eat and it never stops preying. Developing a multifaceted, layered approach to fight against this giant will minimize exploitation of vulnerabilities, allowing people, organizations and the nation to sleep a little easier at night.