RESILIA Cyber Resilience: How Training Organizations Can Start Delivering it Today

The launch events on June 1 in Washington and June 22 in London marked the release of RESILIA cyber resilience best practice, AXELOS’ first new portfolio expansion. The AXELOS suite of products includes a guide, a self-assessment tool, awareness training courses, and a certification program. Now the certification portfolio is officially launched, as decision-maker in an IT training business or a consulting company, it is very likely that you are evaluating

1. Should I adopt this
2. If the answer is yes, how do I go about doing this.

Answer 1 – The Need for RESILIA Cyber Resilience Training

RESILIA cyber resilience helps organizations resist, respond and recover from cyber threats. RESILIA comes at a time when you read about cyber attacks on a daily basis in the papers. Whether it is the Sony hack, the US Office of Personnel Management, or eBay – cyber threats are here to stay and has become a major business which generates more money than global narcotics trafficking.

RESILIA Certified Training will build cyber resilience skills across organizations. Based on the Cyber Resilience Best Practises Guide, it offers a framework for practical knowledge that will enhance existing management strategies and helps organizations align cyber resilience with IT operations, security and incident management. The best practices guide uses the ITIL® lifecycle to develop the skills and insight to detect, respond to and recover from cyber-attacks.

RESILIA cyber resilience provides a business-focused and holistic set of best practices which existing cyber or information security certifications do not cover as they typically are more niche or technical oriented (see diagram). Therefore RESILIA could be a timely and attractive proposition for training organizations offering ITIL, COBIT, or risk management programs, or would like to expand their information security portfolio.

Answer 2 – Path to Delivering RESILIA Cyber Resilience Training

For all AXELOS products, AXELOS publishes an operating guide that explains how training businesses can become official providers within the scheme. The operating model has the following elements for the RESILIA cyber resilience portfolio.

• Accreditor: This is AXELOS, the owner of RESILIA.
• Exam Institute (EI): They are responsible for delivering certification exams, and managing the accreditation of training providers, ensuring that only accredited organizations deliver courses.
• Accredited Training Organizations (ATO): These are training providers that meet specific quality criteria, and are able to deliver training courses to their customers. Criteria include items such as quality of processes, quality of staff, quality of instructors, etc. ATOs can market RESILIA cyber resilience courses under their own brand as an official ‘Accredited RESILIA Training Organization’.
• Affiliates: These are training providers who leverage the accreditation of an Accredited Training Organization to deliver training programs to their customers. They may for example not have their own quality management system, or their own trainers. Affiliates must reference the ATO in their marketing statements.
• Appointed Courseware Providers (ACP) – NEW: This is new in the operating scheme for RESILIA. ATOs who would like to deliver courses to their customers have to use the courseware from an ACP. AXELOS appointed courseware providers to ensure quality in the development, management, and delivery of courseware.
• Learners: The most important one in this list, this is the one this is all about. The learners participate in a course provided by an ATO or Affiliate and take a certification exam provided by an EI.

Working with ITpreneurs on RESILIA Cyber Resilience as an ATO

ITpreneurs is an Appointed Courseware Provider (ACP) for RESILIA and provides high-quality classroom and eLearning courseware to ATOs. If you are an ATO, or would like to become an ATO, and would like to work with ITpreneurs there are only 2 things required:

• A partnership agreement with ITpreneurs, defining terms and conditions for ordering courseware from ITpreneurs and working with ITpreneurs.
• A contract with one of the Exam Institutes that are carrying RESILIA. This may include an audit of organizational procedures, instructors in case you are not yet offering other AXELOS products.

Working with ITpreneurs on RESILIA Cyber Resilience as an Affiliate

ITpreneurs is also an ATO under the AXELOS scheme. This means that ITpreneurs meets all of the criteria required under the scheme. ITpreneurs are audited regularly by their exam institutes ensuring quality in the delivery of learning programs. Training providers may decide to become an Affiliate if they want to go to market quickly with ITpreneurs operating as a full-service provider. There are also two things required:

• A partnership agreement with ITpreneurs, defining terms and conditions for ordering courseware from ITpreneurs and working with ITpreneurs.
• An Affiliate form that needs to be completed and submitted to the Exam Institute ITpreneurs is working with.

There are advantages of being an ATO or being an Affiliate. The decision depends on the appetite for administration and management, the requirement for carrying the official logo, the Exam Institute of preference, or speed to market. ITpreneurs will support training providers irrespective of the choice made.

If you would like to have a conversation on these choices, just let us know. We are here to help.