Operational Resilience

To achieve operational resilience, an organization must look beyond simple disaster recovery and instead build a system that can absorb shocks and adapt to changing circumstances.

1. Risk Identification and Management
This pillar serves as the foundation for resilience by proactively identifying and mapping internal and external threats that could disrupt critical business services. Rather than just listing generic risks, effective management involves “impact mapping”—understanding how a failure in one third-party vendor or a single data point could cascade through the entire organization. By identifying these vulnerabilities early, companies can prioritize resources toward the most high-impact areas.

2. Business Continuity Planning (BCP)
Business continuity focuses on the “how-to” of maintaining operations during a disruption. It involves setting Tolerance for Disruption levels, which define the maximum amount of time a service can be down before causing irreparable harm to customers or the market. A strong BCP includes detailed playbooks that outline alternative strategies, processes, and procedures to keep essential services running while primary systems are being restored.

3. IT Resilience
IT resilience is the technical ability of an organization’s digital assets and infrastructure to remain available and secure under stress. This goes beyond standard backups to include high-availability architecture, “self-healing” cloud systems, and robust cybersecurity protocols. In an era of constant cyber threats, this pillar ensures that data remains intact and that digital platforms can failover to secondary sites without significant data loss or downtime, which may have rippling impacts for customers or the market.

4. Crisis Management and Response
While BCP focuses on the process, Crisis Management focuses on the people and communication. This pillar establishes the command structure and communication channels needed to make rapid, high-stakes decisions during an emergency. It ensures that stakeholders—including employees, regulators, and the public—receive clear, accurate information, which helps preserve the organization’s reputation and trust even when physical or digital operations are compromised.

5. Adaptive Governance and Culture
Resilience is ultimately a capability and a muscle that needs conditioning. This pillar ensures that leadership is actively involved in resilience oversight and that the organization’s culture values agility over rigid adherence to old protocols. Adaptive governance involves continuous learning; after every “near miss” or minor disruption, the organization conducts a post-mortem to update its strategies. This creates a feedback loop where the company becomes stronger and more prepared with every challenge it faces.