Modern business resilience: A framework for continuous readiness

Resilience is the foundation of modern business success. At a time when disruption is constant and confidence can be fragile, organizations are now judged by how they proactively prepare their defenses, how effectively they respond to an attack and how quickly they recover from it.

This is the focus of Modern business resilience: A practical guide to an agile and adaptive resilience strategy, a new report from Omdia with NTT DATA that builds on the principles of cyber resilience that I discussed in a recent blog.

The aim is to help you build a blueprint for resilience that’s agile, adaptive and deeply connected to business performance.

Why the old playbook no longer works

Traditional business continuity plans were built for isolated events — system outages, data losses and short-term disruption. Fast forward to the present day, and the landscape is vastly more dynamic and interconnected. Threats are constant and technology pervasive, while risk exposure extends across supply chains, partners and platforms.

This calls for a shift from the traditional static approach to business continuity to an agile, adaptive strategy for resilience.

Omdia’s analysis is stark. The number of published vulnerabilities surged past 40,000 in 2024, while data exposure now accounts for two-thirds (66%) of all breaches. Each security incident chips away at trust and reputation; rebuilding it costs time and money. In this environment, resilience needs to be a living capability — not a reactive one — that evolves as fast as the risks around it.

With every organization now pretty much a digital enterprise, this reality makes cybersecurity inseparable from business resilience. Our report highlights that modern organizations are moving toward an agile and adaptive resilience strategy, where proactive security, business operations and leadership strategies act in unison. This means ensuring operational continuity and stakeholder trust even in moments of crisis or when defending against attacks.

When cybersecurity becomes the connective tissue between technology and business continuity, your organization can make decisions faster, recover sooner and protect stakeholder confidence. That’s the true measure of resilience.

A collective C-suite priority

Resilience is a leadership priority that shapes financial continuity, customer trust and corporate reputation.

For example, a robust post-incident recovery plan that gets a minimum viable version of the company operational in a matter of hours, instead of weeks or months, can save millions in financial damages. Our report highlights how the C-suite now shares accountability for resilience outcomes, meaning:

• The CEO steers the organization toward stakeholder trust and operational confidence.
• The CISO and CIO align people, processes and technology to enable preparation, response and recovery.
• The CRO and CFO ensure that it translates into financial performance and growth.

This collective ownership ensures resilience is embedded in every decision, investment and innovation initiative.

A framework for continuous readiness

Modern business resilience provides a practical framework for leaders to continuously assess and strengthen their resilience.

It distills the process into three connected stages:

1. Prepare: Identify and protect critical assets, model threats and define minimum viable operations.
2. Respond: Detect and contain incidents with speed, clarity and communication.
3. Recover: Restore business functions, maintain transparency and emerge stronger, delivering swift, coordinated action with a continuous loop of learning and adaptation.

AI’s risk and reward

AI has transformed resilience strategies in two ways at once. First, it has expanded the threat surface through new vectors such as data manipulation and misinformation. At the same time, it’s empowering defenders with automated detection, predictive analytics and real-time response.

We’re seeing the most resilient organizations embrace AI responsibly. They’re using it to improve visibility, speed and precision without sidelining human judgment. It’s a reminder that a resilience framework should be built with the people who will use it in mind — those who need to stay informed, decisive and agile, particularly business leaders.

Explore the full report

Forward-looking organizations see resilience as a catalyst for growth. It protects what matters today, while creating the confidence to pursue what’s next. It enables your organization to innovate with speed, adopt new technologies and enter new markets knowing that continuity and trust are safeguarded.

Our report on modern business resilience is essential reading for leaders who want to strengthen resilience, protect trust and move forward with confidence.

• ALSO READ → Proactive measures, secure outcomes: Make your organization cyber resilient