The 2020 Allianz Risk Barometer, with 39% of responses, ranked cyber incidents as the number one risk threatening business continuity. Any organisation may face a number of challenges e.g. costly data breaches, ransomware incidents, and even litigation after an event. The Internet has, in many ways, changed society, transformed businesses, organisational communication and learning. People can now interact through social networking platforms. Modern society has become very technology driven, as ICT is now an integral component in peoples’ lives. However, besides the many benefits that the Internet and other ICT technology bring, there are also threats, such as cyber-attacks looking to exploit vulnerabilities in ICT applications and systems. This study is a systematic literature review that explores how societal impacts of cyber security in modern society are discussed in academic literature. The Introduction discusses the overall importance of cyber security in today’s society. The body of this paper presents the method in which the literature review was conducted, and a concise summary of the findings that answer the research question: How are societal impacts of cyber security discussed in academic literature? Six categories of investigation of societal impacts of cyber security are identified: 1) Impacts on Social and Societal Levels, 2) Detection of cyber-crime and incidents, 3) Critical infrastructures and services, 4) Impacts of incidents and individual technology, 5) Cybersecurity awareness, and 6) Cybersecurity and collaboration. Lastly, the conclusions, based on the research findings, address the feasibility, impact, strengths, weaknesses and possible ethical concerns of cybersecurity. This paper contributes to the overall understanding of current societal impacts of cyber security, and this understanding benefits the development of methods that assess societal impacts, as well as provides focus for future training and development of cyber and e-skills needed for better awareness of cyber threats, and to better address possible cyber incidents.

Combining business continuity management (BCM) and systematic cyber threat intelligence (CTI) can improve cyber situational awareness to support decision-making through the phases of the resilience cycle (plan, absorb, recover, adapt) to ensure the continuity of organizational operations when encountered by cyber disruptions. End-user needs, human factors, high ethical standards, and social impacts can best be adapted when professionals from different fields work together with end-users to refine and co-develop selected tools into a platform. A resilience assessment that combines BCM and CTI enables 1) quick or detailed assessment of the investigated industry and its critical processes, 2) measurement of performance goals based on information received from end users, where artificial intelligence-based self-learning approaches can be used for functional descriptions, 3) information on the sensitivity of the investigated industry and vulnerability and 4) resilience and BCM throughout the entire resilience cycle. A new Horizon Europe project DYNAMO (Dynamic Resilience Assessment Method including a combined Business Continuity Management and Cyber Threat Intelligence solution for Critical Sectors) works towards combining BCM and CTI to generate a situational picture for decision support. Having this in mind, certain cybersecurity and BCM tools will be developed, refined, and integrated into the DYNAMO platform to provide decision support and awareness to chief information security officers, cybersecurity practitioners, and other stakeholders. This paper reports a case study that explores how combining CTI and BCM can help in the case of a cyber-attack. The research material consists of the news articles by the largest newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat (HS) of how the cyber attack against the therapy center Vastaamo progressed during the first week after the attack. The results show that cyber threat intelligence when flexibly integrated into the BCM approach could create better conditions for improved organizational foresight to react to unpredictable cyber threats to ensure business continuity.