The daily news is currently filled with stories about people in hospital with Covid expressing regret that they did not take the opportunity when they could have to get vaccinated to improve their resilience to infection.  

Similarly, business leaders often express regret at not taking the steps they could have to prevent business disruption due to cyber-attacks, natural disasters, infrastructure outages, supply chain problems, and, yes, pandemics.  

If the pandemic has made anything clear, it is that businesses need – above all else – to ensure resiliency at all levels of operation. An organization that is resilient because it has made resiliency an overarching goal, is typically better able to mitigate any disruption to normal business operations.  

“When it comes to cyber-attacks, everyone is a target and there is no such thing as perfect security, so we need to take various measure and prepare for being breached. Therefore, resilience – the ability to recover – is essential,” says Martin Kuppinger, Principal analyst at KuppingerCole. 

Resiliency is the goal because it is not only about being able to continue business operations despite unforeseen or unpredictable adverse conditions, but also about being agile enough to adapt and innovate to get the most out of prevailing conditions as well as emerge stronger from any crisis.    

Now, more than ever before, it is important for organizations to embrace the goal of resiliency and develop ways of managing it to ensure that is applied to every aspect of the business at every level, including the use, application and security of information technology and data.  

Resiliency is the foundation for continuity and mitigating against any form of economic disruption at a business, regional, national, or global level.

— Warwick Ashford, Senior Analyst at KuppingerCole

Because we understand how important resiliency is and because we are committed to helping your business succeed, KuppingerCole has a great deal of content in a variety of formats available. 

Research

Resiliency is key to business survival in the face of rapidly changing IT, cyber threat, and regulatory environments, but organizations cannot achieve resiliency easily and effectively without having a structured approach.  

For this reason, a growing number of organizations understand the need to adopt a managed approach to resiliency. To help you and your organization to do this, KuppingerCole has compiled a guide to Business Resilience Management. This should be your first step in your journey of adopting a strategic approach to business continuity to achieve business resilience.  

The following KuppingerCole flagship Leadership Compass reports touch on the topic of resiliency: Infrastructure as a Service – Global Providers and API Security Management

For more information on the steps organizations can take to increase their resilience to cyber attacks, and reduce their cyber risks, see this Leadership Brief on Cybersecurity Trends & Challenges 2020 and this one on Security Fabric: A Methodology for Architecting a Secure Future on how business continuity management fits into a well-defined Security Architecture.  

To find out how to not only meet the requirements to run your business in a cost-effective, sustainable, compliant, and agile way, but also to improve security and governance, maintain strategic business objectives, and maintain a consistent focus on the sustainability and resilience of IT, see this Leadership Brief on Working for the Business, not the Auditors.  

Advisories

We have issued several Advisory Notes on resilience-related topics. Review the list below and choose those that meet your needs or interests: 

Audio/video

If you would prefer to listen to our analysts speak about resilience, hear what Senior Analyst Warwick Ashford has to say about Resilience Management in Part One  and Part Two of an Analyst Chat on the topic. 

You can listen to Principal Analyst Martin Kuppinger talk about  Setting Your Cybersecurity Priorities Right and Lead Analyst Alexei Balaganski talking about Protecting Your Organization Against Ransomware, which has become one of the leading causes of business disruption in recent months, underlining the need for organizations to become resilient.  

Martin Kuppinger also looks at how new technologies and methods help in mitigating cyber risks and improving cyber attack resilience in this video presentation on Cybersecurity Trends in the Age of Work from Home

Watch this video for a panel discussion on Managing Cyber Supply Chain Risks and Achieving Digital Business Resilience, or watch Dr Carsten Bange of the Business Application Research Center (BARC) explain How Big Data Technology can help Increase Cyber Attack Resilience

Blogs

Resilience is touched on in several blog posts by our analysts. Find out how resilience is one of the key Elements of a Disaster Operations Plan and how working from home potentially impacts an organization’s resilience in this blog post about Ransomware During the Pandemic Crisis

Find out why it is important to integrate cybsersecurity and business continuity is this blog post on the Top 5 Recommendations for Reducing Cyber Risks in 2020 and this blog post on Redefining the Role of the CISO – Cybersecurity and Business Continuity Management Must Become One

Webinars

Learn what constitutes a comprehensive business continuity and resilience management plan, check out this KuppingerCole webinar on Managing a Crisis: Prepare for Weathering the Next Storm to Come

Whitepapers

KuppingerCole has several whitepapers relating to the topic of resilience:  

Masterclass

If you would like to improve your skills and knowledge relating to resilience by completing a course, KuppingerCole can help there too. You can sign up for our KC Masterclass on Business Resilience Management in a Pandemic Crisis 

Tech Investment

Organizations investing in technologies to promote and support resilience, can have a look at some of the related technology solutions that we have evaluated: