Your clients are striving to get their bearings. After years of shifts in the business environment, they now fully understand that the capacity to adapt quickly has become a prerequisite to continuing to deliver services in this era of change. But how to get there, while avoiding the top business continuity threats?
Facing the top business continuity threats
Step one for your clients is acknowledging the problem – that’s where you come in.
According to the data, not enough firms are adequately prepared. Indeed, as many as 95 per cent of business leaders report that their crisis management capabilities need improvement.
Then, there’s the question of what to prepare for.
Your clients can’t prepare for everything. They should, however, prepare for the likeliest business continuity threats.
The new normal of continuing business continuity threats
What are they? These three business continuity threats come to mind.
COVID
It’s not over yet. The pandemic persists. Indeed, the BA.2. subvariant now appears to be taking hold in western Europe.
Public health officials have been predicting that the subvariant might be even more contagious than the original Omicron variant – a level of transmissibility that provides cold comfort to countries who’ve diligently inoculated their adult populations.
What does it mean for your clients? That remains to be seen.
Epidemiologists aren’t certain whether COVID will come to resemble the common cold or a far more virulent, influenza-like illness.
Whichever way it goes, your clients will have to prepare for severe disruptions to continue this year.
Supply chain
Those disruptions include availability shortages due to COVID protocols mandating isolation for positive infections and close contacts of the infected.
But it’s not just people in short supply.
A global computer chip shortage has meant persistent delays for many electronics, for instance. The items that are available are going for inflated prices. Indeed, many economies are experiencing runaway inflation rates.
The worst part for your clients is there’s no end in sight. Shortages might not clear up until 2023, according to some analysts.
The war in Ukraine is only exacerbating the issue, while introducing shortages in fuel and vital food products like wheat.
What’s more, many of the measures to ease supply issues, such as running major ports around the clock, aren’t working. Ports remain backed up, with labour shortages in last-mile logistics slowing down the products that manage to get out of ports.
Cyber attacks
Ransomware and other cyber threats also remain keen risks. These attacks have the potential to cripple critical services, like the Colonial Pipeline attack did last year.
Governments have sought to intervene. However, ransomware gangs have only gotten more brazen and sophisticated, using Ransomware-as-a-Service and doubling down on distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to extract higher payments.
Not just private actors, either. State actors are also perpetrating these operations, to achieve geopolitical objectives.
Per expert opinion, cyber risk will continue to rise due to rising geopolitical tensions, increased access to cryptocurrencies and dark money, and the general instability associated with the pandemic.
And those don’t even scratch the surface of the myriad threats your clients will face. What can they do?
Well, there are policy interventions your clients can employ to get their business continuity practice up and running. Senior leadership, here, must demonstrate their commitment to resourcing business continuity management systems (BCMS) with pragmatic business continuity management software.
What else? Download our guide to the top eight business continuity threats of 2022 for more tips and strategies.
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