A Resilient Organization Starts with Cyber Resilience — Here’s Why

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Global events, such as recessions and pandemics, create enormous social and economic challenges that impact organizations and their management. From employee and customer satisfaction to financial difficulties, supply chain disruption and skyrocketing cyberattacks, top-level management oversees a wide range of concerns.

As business owners aim to address multiple challenges that may be a threat to their organizations’ success, resilience is a trending buzzword. Organizational resilience is an organization’s ability to foresee, plan for, respond to and adapt to gradual change and unexpected disruptions to survive and thrive.

Is Your Supply Chain Resilient?

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The major upheavals of the last couple of decades, such as the global recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, have demonstrated that firms will suffer severe setbacks if their supply chains are not resilient. An entire supply chain becomes vulnerable if one component is exposed to risk, just like a house of cards will topple if one section is out of balance.

Supply chain resilience refers to an organization’s ability to use its resources to handle unanticipated supply network disruptions. In other words, it is the ability to respond to and recover from challenges without disrupting operations or deadlines.

Think Beyond Basic Backups to Tackle Ransomware

Although ransomware has long been a serious concern for business owners all over the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has created new opportunities for this threat to flourish, and the attack vector is likely to become even more dangerous in the coming years.

According to a report, 304 million ransomware attacks occurred globally in 2020, with ransomware affecting over 65% of global businesses.1 Experts suggest that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, even though SMBs continue to be disproportionately affected by these nefarious attacks, reporting and notifications rarely make the news.

How to Become a Resilient Organization

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The last year and a half have taught us that the world can experience a tremendous change in a short time. Whether it’s rapid technological advancements, cyberattacks, stalling economies or even a global pandemic, only resilient organizations can weather these storms.

That’s why the concept of organizational resilience is now more relevant than ever before. Organizational resilience is all about how well a company anticipates, plans for and responds to gradual change and unexpected disruptions in its business environment so that it can continue to operate and thrive.

Stepping Up Your Cybersecurity With Defense in Depth (DiD)

When the pandemic hit, businesses all over the globe had to shift to remote work almost overnight. Now, with the vaccine rollout in full swing, the hybrid work model is gaining popularity. This allows employees to work from home, the office or split their time between both. According to a report, close to 65% of large businesses have adopted a hybrid model, and most workers prefer it that way.1

However, a distributed workforce comes with its own set of challenges. One of the primary concerns of IT leaders across the globe is the unprecedented increase in cybercrime. Experts estimate that cybercrime has shot up by almost 300% since the start of the pandemic.2

Agility for Your People, Processes and Technology

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Nothing is more crucial to a business than stability. Yes, profit matters, but companies can achieve consistent profits easily when markets are stable.

The world, of course, doesn’t always work this way. Markets are highly unpredictable and things change in the blink of an eye. If your business’s viability is dependent on the marketplace, which is almost always the case, you must be prepared to face the challenges of trying to maintain a smooth path through a changing landscape.

Businesses that survive and thrive under any circumstances share one trait: they are agile. When faced with a challenge, an agile business, like a skilled soccer player, knows when to decelerate, accelerate and turn. Agility can help organizations adapt to changes in the market and changes within the company.

Things to Avoid While Practicing Organizational Agility

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Even though it’s no secret that small to medium-sized businesses often have vastly fewer resources in comparison to larger enterprises, prioritizing agility is just as critical for their survival. This is because, in today’s world, where a variety of unpleasant surprises can arise at any time, you must be well prepared to avoid becoming overwhelmed. Recent events, such as the pandemic, supply chain issues, war, inflation and The Great Resignation, serve as explicit indicators of why your SMB needs to be agile.

When the needs of your customers, employees, the market, the economy and other factors change, agile businesses can adapt quickly and keep working toward their business goals. To be agile, you must have systems in place that allow you to respond quickly to rapidly changing conditions and opportunities by preparing your people, processes and technologies.

However, agility doesn’t happen overnight. You will encounter setbacks that can make your agility journey a bumpy ride. Knowing that is the first step towards business agility.

Making the Case for SMB Agility

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The last two years have been a bumpy ride for organizations of all sizes globally. During this time, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) were hit the worst. Since most SMBs have limited cash and resources, setbacks were much more severe for them than for big corporations with more resources.

Irrespective of whether your company had to completely shut down during the COVID-19 lockdowns or whether it had to create a touchless customer experience or transition to a remote workforce overnight, you may have had so much more at stake than the average business.

Whether you’re facing a global pandemic or something as simple as shifting market conditions, if you want to survive and reach your business objectives, you must improve your organization’s speed, adaptability and innovation. To do that, an SMB like yours requires even more business agility.

What is Organizational Agility?

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It’s hard to predict the future. Just think of all that has happened in the world in the last two years. From the COVID-19 pandemic to supply chain issues to inflation and war, no one could have predicted these events early enough to be adequately prepared.

These challenges make it more difficult for companies to succeed and achieve their long-term objectives.

When the needs of your employees, customers and the market change suddenly, you must be ready to make the necessary shift. Proactive small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can achieve this by practicing organizational agility.

Common Scalability Mistakes SMBs Make

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Most small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are stretched for time and resources, due to which they may end up rushing through process implementations, technology upgrades and new hire training. Inevitably, this results in botched executions and a foundation that doesn’t support sustainable scalability.

Sustainable scaling allows you to scale up or down as needed and considers your people, processes and technologies. This is important for the future of your business because it prepares you to deal with unexpected changes. However, before embarking on the path to sustainable scalability, you should be aware of the most common mistakes to avoid.