The business world is ever-evolving, forcing organisations in every sector to find better solutions and reimagine their products and services in order to stay ahead of the curve. And as with any dynamic environment, adaptability is key to success. This adaptability, or organisational resilience, is key to surviving or even flourishing in adverse situations.
At its heart, organisational resilience describes the ability of a business to prepare for unexpected events and survive market and other shifts. When a company is faced with disruptions that go beyond the regular activity of the business, resilience is what helps it deal with and manage the changing circumstances. After all, by their very nature, unpredictable situations can arise at any time.
These days, when taking into account harsh market conditions, a highly stringent regulatory environment, and a threat landscape polluted with cunning adversaries and complex, sophisticated threats, it’s easy to understand the difficulties organisations face. Each company is exposed to its own threats and vulnerabilities, and to survive they must to safeguard their business from a slew of different disruptions including global disasters, cyber threats, and unpredictable natural conditions. With all these variable factors, bolstering organisational resilience should be a business imperative for any company wishing to control or prevent sudden disruptions.
Resilience is the ability to nip any disruptions in the bud, and efficiently and effectively bounce back from any situation. It helps to regain control quickly in times of unexpected disruption and maintain a status quo while dealing with change, and without being affected. For companies, it is the ability to anticipate a crisis, react quickly to it, and adjust to unexpected conditions. It is also a critical strategy for any business in today’s volatile world.
The good news is that it can be achieved with the right knowledge and tools. Organisational resilience can be built and maintained through deliberate focus and practices that address culture, teams, systems, and processes. Having all of these in place will enable the business the flexibility to ensure trials and tribulations, and when done properly, sometimes emerge stronger and more resilient than before.
Having a well-defined culture and values is key, as these serve as the lifeblood of any business, and help the organisation stay focused on what matters most to its specific mission. Similarly, strong teams that regularly practice team building, and understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and collaborate to solve problems, will find themselves better prepared in the event of a crisis.
Have up to date systems and infrastructure is also key, as these ensure the business can continue to operate under any conditions. Businesses that constantly update and evolve their technology, systems and infrastructure in regular times, will lower the chances of any disruption in unprecedented ones.
Finally, understanding the metrics that drive performance and value for the organisation is key. Having access to reporting of metrics including sales conversion rates, the cost of customer acquisitions, rates of retention, and other trends, will enable the company to spot any anomalous patterns and deal with them before any real danger exists. Having the right processes will enable the business to make objective decisions.
Ultimately, organisational resilience is an ongoing learning process, and therefore training around the scenarios and what to do about them, is also key. Without it, an organisation will not be ready to respond effectively to a major incident if it cannot learn how to deal with the smaller incidents that happen on a daily basis.
According to Denis Makrushin, Security Researcher, the past and present have taught organisations that business continuity depends heavily on the ability to move during a crisis. “When the rug is pulled from under your feet when a cyber incident occurs and core business processes are interrupted, that's when crisis management skills are critical. A company's survival depends on having these skills. And here's the good news. These skills can be developed, and we shouldn’t wait for an incident to happen to get the ball rolling. By simulating an incident we can learn to react appropriately and build a lasting business continuity management strategy.”
itrainsec developed the training to enable organization leadership to perform right decisions and actions during data breach incidents. During the training we will establish an incident communication plan taking into account the organization leadership and security program maturity. Based on the plan and real-world cases we will handle the incident and will go through the different data-breach scenarios to realize the plan from initial step to the end of the crisis.
Key takeaways:
- Deep understanding of the nature of cybersecurity incidents using insights delivered by industry leading cybersecurity expertise
- Decision making process and management and communication strategy to mitigate business and reputation impact during corporate crisis
- Ready-to-use incident management plan