Cybersecurity Continuity Risks: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The scope and breadth of the COVID-19 pandemic were unprecedented. This is especially true for business continuity and the related area of cybersecurity. Historically, business continuity and cybersecurity are viewed and researched as separate fields. This paper synthesizes the two disciplines as one, thus pointing out the need to address both topics simultaneously. This study identifies blind spots experienced by businesses as they navigated through the difficult time of the pandemic by using data collected during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. One major shortcoming was that most continuity and cybersecurity plans focused on single-axis threats. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in multi-axes threats, pointing out the need for new business strategies moving forward. We performed multiple regression analysis and constructed a correlation matrix to capture significant relationships between percentage loss of revenue and levels of concern for different business activities moving forward. We assessed the most pervasive issues Florida small businesses faced in October 2020 and broke these down by the number of citations, the total number of impacts cited, and industry affectedness. Key security risks are identified and specific mitigation recommendations are given.