Operational & cyber resilience

Resilience that runs continuously

A single operating model that keeps governance, critical services, third-parties, preventive controls, and delivery execution continuously effective.
  • Protect critical services across internal and third-party dependencies
  • Make ownership, thresholds, and escalation paths explicit
  • Validate capability through measurable testing and drills, not narrative assurance

Resilience requires continuity

Operational and cyber resilience is the capability to withstand, adapt to, and recover from disruption across critical services and the dependencies that support them.

It spans people, process, technology, and internal and external dependencies. It requires coordination across risk, technology, security, legal, procurement, and operations.

Questions resilience governance answers

What is critical?
Which services are critical, what disruption would mean, and where impact tolerance sits.
What are the dependencies?
Which internal and third-party dependencies underpin critical services, and where exposure is increasing.
Where is risk trending?
Which indicators are trending up, what decisions are triggered, and who owns the response.
Can recovery be trusted?
How quickly services can recover under stress, validated through realistic drills and testing.

Five elements of a continuously running operating model

Resilience becomes sustainable when these elements work as one system: decisions, execution, and feedback loop remain continuously aligned under change.

Governance and operating model

Clear decision rights, ownership, and escalation paths across the Three Lines of Defence.

  • KRIs and thresholds that drive decisions, not only reporting
  • Assurance validated through drills and simulations
  • Risk stays measurable and steerable under change

More on this: Security Governance & Operating Models.

Critical services and impact tolerance

Define what must remain operational under stress, and what failure would mean.

  • Critical service identification and business impact analysis
  • Impact tolerance calibration and scenario testing
  • Recovery expectations that can be validated, not assumed

Dependency and third-party oversight

Build visibility that supports decisions across internal and external dependencies.

  • Concentration exposure, shared dependencies, and exit readiness
  • Oversight proportional to criticality and risk
  • Dependency intelligence that remains current as systems evolve

More on this: Third-Party Oversight.

Preventive control validation at the point of change

Validate preventive controls in infrastructure and deployment workflows so insecure states are blocked before they reach production.

  • Prevention carries the workload; monitoring remains a targeted backstop
  • Continuous evidence is generated through delivery, not reconstructed later
  • Surprises and misconfigurations are reduced through early feedback

More on this: Resilience Engineering.

Transformation and delivery

Execute multi-stream programmes across organisational boundaries so resilience capability remains operational.

  • Requirements engineering, roadmaps, and UAT anchored in real workflows
  • Ownership made explicit for data, decisions, and remediation closure
  • Execution stays consistent as scope and dependencies change

More on this: Resilience Transformation & Delivery.

What good looks like

Governable resilience
Ownership is clear, escalation is predictable, and decisions are supported by measurable indicators.
Tested capability
Drills and simulations produce observable outcomes and remediation tracked to closure.
Stable foundations
Preventive controls are validated at the point of change, reducing surprises and recurring misconfigurations.
Explainable dependencies
Dependency exposure and concentration can be understood and governed as they change.

Common traps

Patterns that turn resilience into coordination overhead instead of operational capability.

Reporting over capability
Workstreams produce documents, but ownership, decisions, and testing do not change.
Ownership without accountability
Coordination roles exist, but relationship and data owners are not accountable for outcomes.
Narrative assurance
Exercises produce narratives, but remediation is not measurable or tracked to closure.
Monitoring as the main control
Prevention is weak, so detection becomes the primary mechanism and exceptions accumulate.
Tools without operating model
Platforms are adopted before taxonomy, thresholds, and escalation paths are defined.

Does resilience governance work only during quarterly reviews?

If resilience work is consuming capacity without clear outcomes, this engagement focuses on an operating model that stays continuously effective under change and disruption.