How To Build Cyber Resilience: 7 Strategies OpenText Recommends For MSPs

Cybersecurity is largely measured by prevention: blocking attacks, stopping malware and keeping bad actors out. The modern threat landscape has changed the conversation.

Ransomware is faster. Phishing attacks are becoming more convincing. AI is helping attackers automate and personalize campaigns at scale, compressing the time organizations have to identify suspicious activity and respond before damage spreads. At the same time, businesses are operating across increasingly complex cloud, SaaS and hybrid environments.

As a result, customers are placing greater emphasis on resilience—the ability to anticipate threats, withstand disruption, recover quickly and continue operating when incidents occur.

Here are seven strategies MSPs can use to help customers strengthen their cyber resilience.

1. Adopt A Layered Security Approach

Why is layered security important?

No single security control can stop every threat.

Research shows organizations that combine multiple security layers achieve better outcomes than those relying on a single defensive tool—lowering breach costs by an average of $2.2 million, according to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024. Security awareness training, endpoint protection, DNS security and email security also play a role.

A layered strategy should include:

The objective is to ensure that if one control fails, another control can limit the impact.

2. Improve Threat Detection And Response

What happens when prevention fails?

Cyber resilience assumes that some attacks will succeed.

That's why rapid detection and response have become just as important as prevention. The faster suspicious activity is identified, the faster damage can be contained and recovery can begin.

AI-enabled attacks can move quickly from initial compromise to lateral movement, data theft or disruption. That gives security teams and MSPs a narrower response window, making continuous monitoring, rapid triage and predefined escalation paths essential.

MSPs can strengthen resilience through:

Reducing dwell time often has a direct impact on business disruption and recovery costs.

3. Prioritize Vulnerability Management

Why are unpatched vulnerabilities still a problem?

Many successful attacks exploit known weaknesses organizations have not yet addressed.

Misconfigured systems, outdated software and unpatched endpoints continue to create opportunities for attackers. Risk-prioritized vulnerability management helps organizations focus resources where they will have the greatest impact.

Key actions to mitigate this include:

The fewer vulnerabilities exposed to attackers, the smaller the potential attack surface.

4. Build A Robust Backup Strategy

What role do backups play in cyber resilience?

The ability to recover data quickly is one of the foundations of resilience. Even strong security controls cannot guarantee that every incident will be prevented. Frequent backups, protected from tampering and regularly maintained, help organizations recover more quickly following ransomware or data loss events.

A strong backup strategy should include:

Recovery capabilities are often the difference between a temporary disruption and a prolonged outage.

5. Test Recovery Plans Regularly

Is having a recovery plan enough?

No. Plans only work if they have been tested.

Many organizations have documented recovery procedures but rarely validate them. Testing helps identify gaps, clarify responsibilities and ensure systems can truly be restored within expected timeframes.

MSPs can support customers through:

The more familiar teams are with recovery processes, the more effectively they can respond during a real incident when the stakes are high.

6. Make Security Awareness Continuous

Why does employee training still matter?

People remain one of the most common targets in cyberattacks.

At the same time, AI-generated phishing emails are becoming increasingly convincing, removing many of the warning signs users traditionally relied upon to identify malicious messages.

Effective programs typically include:

Technology can block many threats, but informed users remain a critical part of any defense strategy.

7. Simplify and Consolidate Security Operations

How does consolidation improve resilience?

Complexity often creates risk.

Many organizations manage multiple disconnected security, backup and monitoring tools. In fact, 69 percent of organizations cited tool sprawl as the top factor limiting cloud security effectiveness in a 2026 Cybersecurity Insiders’ Report—creating visibility gaps, inconsistent policies and slower response times when incidents occur.

Consolidation can help organizations achieve:

A more manageable environment allows security teams and MSPs to focus on response and recovery rather than tool maintenance.

As threats become more sophisticated, resilience is increasingly becoming the measure customers care about most—not whether an incident occurred, but how effectively and quickly they recovered following one.