Operational Resilience as a Strategic Imperative: Navigating DORA, UK, CPS 230, and Beyond
In today’s interconnected and fast-moving environment, organizations face an array of disruptions that threaten their ability to deliver critical products and services. Cyberattacks, technology failures, supply chain breakdowns, and geopolitical upheavals are no longer rare events; they are persistent realities. The expectation from regulators, investors, and customers alike is clear: organizations must not only withstand disruption but also demonstrate their capacity to recover and adapt.
Operational resilience has therefore moved from a back-office consideration to a board-level responsibility. It is no longer optional or supplemental; it is central to business strategy, trust, and survival. The question organizations must answer is not if disruption will occur, but when — and whether the business is prepared to adapt with agility and confidence.
This is where GRC — governance, risk management, and compliance — provides the foundation. With the advancements of GRC 7.0 – GRC Orchestrate, organizations can align governance with resilience objectives, integrate risk and resilience processes across silos, and embed compliance within the very fabric of operations.
The Expanding Regulatory Galaxy
Around the globe, regulatory bodies are converging on the same message: resilience is mandatory. While the details differ, the core expectations align across jurisdictions.
For example:
- United Kingdom – The FCA, PRA, and Bank of England require firms to identify important business services, set impact tolerances, and test severe but plausible scenarios.
- European Union DORA – The Digital Operational Resilience Act mandates ICT risk management, resilience testing, incident reporting, and third-party oversight across the financial sector.
- Australia CPS 230 – Embeds operational risk and resilience into governance, controls, and third-party arrangements.
- EU NIS2 & CER – Extend resilience obligations beyond finance to digital infrastructure and critical entities.
- United States Fed/OCC/FDIC – Joint guidance highlights governance, incident response, and interconnections across critical operations.
- Singapore MAS, Hong Kong HKMA OR-2, and Canada OSFI B-13 – All emphasize resilience testing, governance, communication, and assurance in critical operations.
Though diverse in scope, these frameworks orbit a shared center: resilience is an enterprise-wide obligation, spanning governance, risk management, testing, third-party oversight, and accountability.
From Fragmentation to Orchestration
Despite these clear demands, many organizations still manage resilience in silos. Technology teams may focus on digital continuity, risk managers on business continuity, compliance teams on regulations, and procurement on third-party oversight. Each unit acts with the best intentions, yet without integration the result is duplication, inefficiency, and blind spots.
Such fragmentation undermines resilience. Disruptions rarely respect organizational boundaries. A cyberattack can ripple through suppliers, customer service, and compliance reporting simultaneously. Without orchestration, organizations remain vulnerable to risks that span multiple domains.
The future requires a unified approach. GRC 7.0 – GRC Orchestrate provides the architecture to integrate governance, risk management, and compliance into a single operational command center. This is not just about efficiency; it is about ensuring that resilience is measurable, actionable, and embedded across the enterprise.
Digital Twins: A Living Map of Resilience
Among the most powerful tools enabling this orchestration is the digital twin. Unlike traditional static repositories such as a CMDB, a digital twin is a living, dynamic model that reflects the interconnected nature of an organization’s assets, people, processes, and third parties.
By unifying data from across the enterprise — IT systems, operational dependencies, vendor relationships, and external intelligence — a digital twin becomes a resilience encyclopedia, translating complexity into actionable insight.
With digital twins, organizations can:
- Map dependencies across critical services and suppliers.
- Simulate disruptions such as outages, cyber incidents, or supplier failures.
- Test impact tolerances against regulatory expectations (e.g., DORA or CPS 230).
- Visualize cascading effects, showing how a single point of failure impacts the wider organization.
- Provide intuitive reporting that bridges technical detail with executive decision-making.
This continuous, scenario-driven view allows organizations to anticipate problems, adjust strategies, and strengthen resilience long before disruption occurs.
Agentic AI: Augmenting Human Oversight
While digital twins provide the model, agentic AI enhances the ability to act upon it. By continuously scanning intelligence feeds, identifying anomalies, and recommending mitigation strategies, AI acts as a constant monitor for resilience.
Key roles of agentic AI include:
- Scanning for new threats or emerging risks.
- Suggesting remediation actions or escalation paths when tolerances are breached.
- Coordinating workflows across risk, compliance, and operational teams.
- Learning from past disruptions to refine resilience strategies.
AI is not a replacement for human decision-making but a force multiplier, ensuring resilience oversight is proactive, adaptive, and data-driven.
Embedding Resilience in the DNA of the Enterprise
True resilience cannot be bolted on after the fact. It must be woven into the enterprise architecture — embedded in business processes, risk frameworks, and compliance obligations. GRC 7.0 makes this possible by:
- Aligning regulatory obligations with internal controls and operations.
- Linking risks, policies, and continuity plans directly to business services.
- Integrating systems, data, and third-party relationships into a unified resilience fabric.
The result is an organization where resilience is not a separate program but part of everyday decision-making — built into the very DNA of how the business operates.
A Call to Action: Resilience as the Prime Directive
Resilience is not simply about survival. It is about enabling the organization to fulfill its mission, no matter what disruptions arise. The regulatory landscape is intensifying, but the core expectation remains the same: organizations must demonstrate operational resilience.
By embracing GRC 7.0 – GRC Orchestrate, with digital twins as the living map and agentic AI as a supporting watch officer, organizations can build an integrated, forward-looking approach to resilience.
The call to action is clear: resilience cannot remain fragmented or reactive. It must be orchestrated, embedded, and continuously assured. Only then can organizations confidently navigate uncertainty and move forward with agility and integrity.