Though the immediate challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic have relented, businesses are still dealing with the long-term impacts of slow GDP growth and high global inflation. In fact, Allianz Research anticipates nearly 30,000 U.S. businesses will go bankrupt in 2025 due to slow growth, persistent geopolitical frictions and challenging global financial conditions.
In addition to volatile macro environments, organizations are grappling with a global talent shortage, an average data breach cost of $4.88 million and a recovery time of two weeks for increasingly frequent supply chain disruptions.
That’s why building and strengthening business resilience is mission-critical to the future of all organizations. Not only is resilience key to mitigating the short- and long-term effects of disruptive events, it’s also essential to growth and survival.
Let’s take a closer look at business resiliency and what can be done to create and maintain a more resilient organization.
What is business resilience in corporate risk management?
Facing increasingly sophisticated and more cyber attacks; record-breaking heat waves and climate-related disasters; shifting geopolitical tensions; regulatory and compliance risks as well as inflation and IP disputes, businesses are starting to pay closer attention to developing crisis contingency plans and other resiliency programs.
According to the International Organization for Standardization, resilience is an organization’s ability to adapt to a business disruption while maintaining operations under changing circumstances. In other words, a resilient organization is one that can absorb the initial shock of a disruption while also pivoting in response to its dynamic environment.
It’s important to note that business resilience shouldn’t be confused with business continuity. Although they’re related and often overlapping terms, business continuity planning is focused on immediate response and short-term operation. In contrast, resiliency approaches risk management with a long-term and proactive lens.
Moreover, business resilience is a combination of several risk management disciplines, including business continuity, disaster recovery and crisis management. But the bottom line is: Resiliency is about planning ahead, anticipating disruption and adapting to changes as necessary.
Read More: Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery
Why is business resilience important?
Organizations that had at least some semblance of resiliency were able to keep critical business organization and outside influences. Those who lack a resilient risk management posture are more exposed to consequences such as the following:
- Significant financial loss
- Reputational damage
- Threats to employee health, safety and well-being
- Loss or disruption of critical infrastructure
- Loss of corporate data, assets and other resources
Organizations exhibiting resilience and learning propensity have higher survival rates. That means resilience is becoming synonymous with survival. And when you consider the increasingly sporadic and unpredictable threat vectors—from misinformation and disinformation to extreme weather events that put organizations at risk—it’s plain to see why resilience is garnering so much attention.
The business resilience plan
Anticipating disruption is fundamental to resilience. But to anticipate a disruptive event, you need to be forward-thinking—that’s where the business resilience plan comes into play.
A business resilience plan is a document designed to help organizations navigate business disruption and return to a state of acceptable operation. In short, it outlines the necessary steps an organization should take to mitigate and survive a crisis. The basic contents of a business resilience plan include the following:
- Business impact analysis: Evaluates the potential consequences of a disruption.
- Risk assessment: Identifies risk factors with the potential to cause harm.
- Risk management plan: Documents steps taken to keep risks in check.
- Business continuity plan: Outlines how the business should continue to operate during a disruption.
- Disaster recovery plan: Describes how a business can quickly minimize the impact of a disaster so the organization can resume operations.
- Crisis management plan: Outlines how to respond to a situation that negatively affects profitability, reputation or ability to operate.
- Incident response plan: Describes procedures for identifying and responding to an emergency incident.
Resilience Leads to Growth
Highly resilient companies grow revenues 6 percentage points faster than their peers and have profit margins that are 8 percentage points higher, according to Accenture.
Benefits of resilience planning
Business resilience isn’t merely a survival strategy—it’s an ongoing competitive advantage. Take the impact of a natural disaster, for example. When an extreme weather event strikes a manufacturing plant, it not only halts operations at that one facility, but also triggers a domino effect that’s felt across the plant’s supply chain.
An effective business resilience plan provides the framework an organization needs to mitigate the ongoing ramifications of the disaster and accelerate recovery.
Thus, business resilience planning offers three key advantages:
- Improved risk detection: Resilient firms ensure they have the tools needed to detect risks and disruptions early on—and that they are prepared to manage, mitigate and respond as quickly and effectively as possible
- Stronger elasticity: Resilient businesses are like rubber bands in that they can stretch to their limit and return to form. With a well-prepared and agile response plan, organizations can withstand the initial shock of unexpected disruption and crises and rebound to an acceptable state of operation.
- Faster recovery: Resilience creates adaptability which enables organizations to thrive in a post-crisis environment
Resilient Organizations Recover Faster
Organizations deemed resilience leaders experience less downtime—which costs global 2000 companies $400B annually—and minimal impact from hidden costs, according Splunk’s The Hidden Cost of Downtime report.
What does business resilience look like in 2025?
COVID-19 may have been an eye-opener for most businesses, but the truth is that the need to make resilience a business imperative has been a long time coming.
Security leaders and their counterparts must contend with a risk landscape that is more complicated, less predictable and increasingly difficult to manage. This includes a multitude of risk factors that have been increasing in frequency and severity over the past 30 years. And global uncertainty, climate change, geopolitical risk, cyber attacks and natural disasters are all on the rise.
Here’s the problem: A substantial number of organizations still lack the resiliency to keep up with the accelerating pace of the current risk landscape. Though 97% of executives view resiliency as very or somewhat important, only 47% see their organization as resilient, according to SAS.
6 areas of business resilience
The good news is that there are six fundamental areas of focus that business leaders can use to develop and strengthen resilience.
Business model resilience. Flexibility and agility are key pieces of building business resilience. Business model resilience focuses on adapting the organization’s business model to material changes in demand, competitors, technology and regulations.
Financial resilience. Organizations are often blinded by short-term returns and not focused enough on long-term financial risk. Balancing the two with a solid capital position and sufficient amount of liquidity is key to mitigating fluctuations in revenue, cost or credit.
Operational resilience. Supply chain disruptions can undermine productivity and send business operations into disarray without contingencies in place. Resilient organizations are able to pivot to meet sudden changes in supply and demand, such as by adding redundancies to their supply chain.
Organizational resilience. Employee acquisition, retention and satisfaction are big parts of mastering organizational resilience. Organizations that foster diversity and inclusion, develop a culture of agile learning and secure top talent are able to more flexibly navigate fluctuations in the workforce, such as the “Great Resignation.”
Reputational resilience. Consumers, employees, investors and other stakeholders are holding businesses accountable for their actions and values. Resilient organizations bridge the gap between the two and closely align what they say with what they do. They embrace accountability, are open to change and actively listen and respond to societal expectations.
Technological resilience. Businesses that invest in secure, flexible technology stacks and operationalize high-quality data are better equipped to deliver projects safely, on time and under budget. They’re also able to develop a robust IT disaster recovery plan to avoid service outages and maintain critical business operations during a disruptive event, such as a cyber attack or similar incident.
When organizations embrace the six areas above, they’re better positioned to anticipate disruption, mitigate its effects, adapt to changing circumstances and thrive in the future.
Develop a resilient business
Implementing resilient strategies is not an easy task, especially when organizations lack a proper understanding of risk and resilience. Without that understanding, it’s difficult for enterprises to overcome the three main barriers to becoming resilient.
No. 1. The returns are long-term
Many businesses are focused on short-term returns rather than long-term sustainability. Achieving resilience requires a multi-timescale perspective—one that accounts for both immediate and future continuity.
Though it’s tempting to focus on immediate issues, the World Economic Forum cautions against a myopic approach and urges leaders to protect resources for long-term, sustainable growth goals. Beyond any immediate threat, not strengthening resilience presents a crucial threat to organizations.
No. 2. Plans are too static
Companies are primarily concerned with creating fixed continuity plans rather than dynamic ones. But risk isn’t set in stone—it’s constantly changing and unpredictable. Stable plans are only effective when the causal relationship between incident and impact is clear.
No. 3. Business leaders need convincing
Strategies for business resilience often create value differently than an organization’s typical activities. For this reason, it may take clear evidence and explanation to convince decision makers that resiliency strategies are a worthwhile investment.
Download eBook: How to Make a Strong Business Case for Investing in Corporate Security
Building resilience: Strategies and best practices
Implementing a culture of business resiliency throughout an organization doesn’t happen overnight. But with time, dedication and a few basic strategies, businesses can get started in the right direction.
The following are tangible actions and best practices security and risk leaders can use to win executive buy-in, develop strategic resilience and elevate their risk management abilities:
- Integrate risk into everything: Consider resilience as both an opportunity and an imperative to expand the organization’s scope beyond the limits of short-term return. By assessing the impact of lost or reduced functionality in every business operation, you can coordinate a tailored response to mitigate a potential disaster.
- Discuss resilience in terms executives understand: In other words, measure resilience in terms of the bottom line. Communicating the relative cost of disruption will help convince executives that resiliency is a critical component of growth and sustainability.
- Be a forward-thinker: Look past the short term to help business leaders in your organization see the long-term implications of disruption. Shifting time horizons outward allows organizations to see the bigger picture and turn crisis into opportunity.
- Identify strengths and weaknesses: Know where your vulnerabilities are. This is key to understanding the risk environment. Test your resilience strategies against various scenarios to better analyze performance and implement improvements.
- Embed resilience within first-line teams: People are an important piece of the resilience puzzle. Ensure frontline employees are integrated into the resilience framework, which empowers them to participate in risk management and enhances their ability to spot and respond to disruptions.
- Establish an early-warning system: The faster a threat is identified, the sooner it can be addressed and the faster the organization can respond. Real-time risk and event detection solutions, especially those powered by AI, help ensure security leaders can stay ahead of risks and therefore mitigate and respond to potential threats faster and more efficiently.
Dataminr in Action: Early Detection of Baltimore Bridge Collapse
Foster resilience
Although there’s much debate about how businesses should quantitatively measure resilience, there are four qualitative factors that all resilient organizations have in common. A truly resilient business can:
- Identify and assess risks that threaten critical infrastructure
- Locate people and assets that might be in harm’s way
- Execute standard operating procedures and protocols
- Analyze performance before, during and after disruption and crises
Mastering all four of these conditions is no easy task. By implementing real-time AI-powered alerting solutions, like that of Dataminr Pulse for Corporate Security, companies are able to stay abreast of critical events and threats, reduce crisis response times and mitigate disruptions to their organizations more effectively—ensuring business continuity and resilience.
Dataminr Pulse for Corporate Security
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Learn MoreThis insight article has been updated from the original, published on August 12, 2022, to reflect new events, conditions and/or research.
