Organisational Resilience 2.0: Managing Multiple Threats Proactively, Efficiently and Effectively

In collaboration with Control Risks, Everbridge is addressing the critical topic of 'Organisational Resilience 2.0: Managing Multiple Threats Proactively, Efficiently and Effectively - Moving from a reactive crisis response approach to a proactive crisis prevention approach'

Threats know no organisational boundaries. Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, power outages, and infrastructure events remind us that all organisations are vulnerable to both manmade and natural disasters.

The key to improving organisational resiliency is identifying and preparing for threats that pose danger to your assets, operations, and people. While risk assessments and risk management plans are crucial to every organisation, another key component of any operational risk management process is proactively preparing for the worst-case scenario.

COVID-19 has been the biggest lesson and reset for all of us. No nation or organisation has escaped widespread disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic. What has it taught us?

"Every battle is won before it is ever fought," so said Sun Tzu.

We can see this today. More than ever, preparation and equanimity is of paramount importance. What we do today and how we all position ourselves will echo throughout the next few years and will set the stage for how our citizens and customers view and interact with our products and services.

The pandemic and increasingly extreme weather situations all over the world are making the leaders rethink their operational resilience and business continuity strategies.

They are pondering if there is any guide to identify, getting ready for, and responding effectively and efficiently to critical events?

Is there any solution available that would automate and accelerate organisations’ operational response to critical events to keep people safe and businesses running?

It’s important to remember that business-threatening disasters can take many forms. It’s not always a destructive natural disaster ( earthquakes, floods, pandemics) In fact, it’s far more common to experience disaster from “the inside” – events that hurt your productivity or affect your IT infrastructure and are just as disruptive to your operations.

Incidents like cyberattacks, data loss, malware and viruses, hardware and software failures, internet, and network disruptions are some of the “inside events” that can hurt your business operations.

It would require an integrated approach to aggregate risk data, locate people and assets under threat, initiate action and manage incidents, and analyse after-action performance.

An Integrated , Unsiloed and Unified Approach to Improve Operational Resilience

Organisations are investing significant resources in sophisticated controls to protect people, brands, and assets from multiple threats. These disruptive incidents (ranging from extreme weather to IT outages) increasingly lead to operational losses, brand damage, and concerns for health and safety.

Despite the investment, companies struggle to optimise their critical event management (CEM) operation, slowing down response time and creating potentially life-threatening confusion. As a result, companies are turning toward continuous-resolution and a unified approach to critical event management that links security and business operations.

Organisations with a unified approach will see a return on their investment in the form of reduced mean time to identify, know, fix, and resolve events — the real measures of a successful critical event management strategy.

Companies that work to integrate their approach across silos also stand a chance of a significant reduction in the impact that critical events have on safety, reputation, and revenue.

Technology will help them to be prepared, provide them with the ability to monitor risk intelligence, and give them the means of communicating with employees, wherever they are and protect them in the process.

 Managing Multiple Threats - Efficient, Automated and Collaborative Process

In an increasingly uncertain world, there is a need for companies to increasingly taking a unified approach (also known as the cross-functional fusion center approach) to combat the widespread damage of critical events.

These organisations need to work across business units, combining internal resources, technology, and business services, such that operations to detect and manage multiple critical events beyond strictly securing facilities.

Businesses today will likely suffer multiple critical events every year, resulting in millions of dollars in unexpected costs, operational disruption, and real threats to their workforce, customers, or suppliers. 

Managing multiple threats, therefore, has become a new operational imperative. To anticipate, manage, and curb disruptions to business continuity, leading COOs are embracing a unified approachto CEM, enabled by tested, purpose-built technology. 

Given the growth of critical event risks, it is no longer an option for one job function to reactively address this risk or rely on their C-suite peers, such as the Chief Security Officer, to be responsible for managing this risk.