The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) has today released its complete three-part Technology Watch Guidance Note series, Cyber Security and Resilience for Digital Preservation, for general public access.
Following an exclusive preview for DPC Members over the summer, all three Guidance Notes are now freely available to the wider digital preservation community.
Written by Heather Lowrie, Director of Resilionix, and Garth Stewart, Head of Good Practice at the DPC, the series responds to the increasingly complex cyber threat landscape faced by organizations responsible for preserving digital content. It brings together cyber security and digital preservation perspectives, providing practical guidance to help practitioners and organizational leaders understand cyber risks, strengthen resilience and preparedness, and safeguard long-term access to digital content.
The three-part series takes readers from understanding the risks through to practical action:
Part 1: Understand Cyber Threats introduces key cyber security concepts, threats and risks for digital preservation. It considers why cyber security needs to be embedded within digital preservation practice and highlights the importance of collaboration between preservation, IT and security teams.
Part 2: Engage Stakeholders focuses on how digital preservation practitioners can work effectively with colleagues across their organizations. It explores how digital preservation can complement wider cyber security programmes and offers practical approaches to building organizational support and shared responsibility for cyber resilience.
Part 3: Respond turns these principles into practical action. It provides recommendations for strengthening cyber resilience in day-to-day digital preservation practice, including the secure handling of removable media, high-risk file formats and unprocessed collections, as well as cyber risks associated with open-source tools, supply chains and emerging AI technologies.
Together, the three Guidance Notes are designed to help organizations develop effective approaches to managing cyber risk while continuing to meet their digital preservation objectives.
To accompany the general release of the series, Garth Stewart has also written a new blog, Cyber security and resilience for digital preservation: a big job, a shared responsibility, a collective mission, reflecting on the thinking behind the Guidance Notes and the importance of taking a shared approach to cyber resilience.
The Technology Watch publication series is just one of the ways the DPC supports the digital preservation community. An international charitable foundation and advocate for digital preservation, the Coalition helps its members around the world to deliver resilient long-term access to digital content and services through community engagement, targeted advocacy work, training and workforce development, capacity building, good practice and standards, tailored support and consultancy, and through good management and governance. Its vision is a secure digital legacy.
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