From Crisis to Continuity: Building Resilience Against Unpredictable Threats

Arctera.io’s Soniya Bopache offers commentary on building resilience against unpredictable threats; from crisis to continuity. This article originally appeared in Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community that enables human conversation on AI.

Unpredictable natural forces and unexpected weather patterns have become increasingly common, often causing widespread destruction and significant financial losses. In 2024 alone, the United States experienced more than two dozen weather-related incidents that resulted in $1 billion in damages. We are not even halfway through 2025 and again we’ve already seen several significant instances of natural destruction, including wildfires and hurricanes, emphasizing how sudden and volatile these scenarios can be.

Many business owners don’t fully anticipate the potential consequences of these unpredictable occurrences until they find themselves in the middle of a crisis. And, in the wake of such events, historically, many organizations have uprooted their operations to other regions or countries where environmental threats are less likely to interrupt their business.

However, evolving regulatory requirements, a desire for data sovereignty and changes in the global data centre landscape, mean organizations are facing an increasingly complex situation, which further complicates data storage and security.

Add to this the omnipresent threat of ransomware cyberattacks and organizations are having to completely rethink their strategies and move beyond thinking simply about geographic relocation. Operational resilience and business continuity efforts need to be treated as a core business imperative. Let’s explore some key considerations for how organizations can prepare and protect their data against any disruption.

Considering High Availability and Disaster Recovery to Modernize Risk Management

Organizations face a constant array of risks every day. However, unpredictable weather, as an example, is often overlooked or underestimated in business continuity planning against widespread disruptions. Organizations need to move beyond the physical location of data and instead consider modern frameworks that can overcome the complexity of current threats. This is where considerations like high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) come into play. To do this, IT teams must start by executing a thorough risk assessment to fully understand the potential impacts on operations to inform effective mitigation plans.

According to Gartner, the average cost of downtime is nearly $5,600 per minute, a number that can soon add up to be devastating to an organization’s bottom line if they aren’t able to recover rapidly. This is why HA and DR are critical for failover and recovery processes to minimize downtime. These strategies also tie back to the most basic business principles, like maintaining customer trust and protecting brand reputation while also ensuring regulatory compliance.

Bridging Gaps in Resilience

For applications hosted in the cloud, organizations also need to account for the Shared Responsibility Model. This framework is a near-ubiquitous element of the licensing agreement for CSPs and means that, while the cloud provider secures the infrastructure, it’s a business’ responsibility to safeguard its data, applications, and access controls. Without recognizing these shared roles, companies risk serious gaps in their resilience strategies that could leave them vulnerable to bad actors.

Organizations also need to adapt to regulatory risks, tailoring their strategies to meet industry-specific compliance requirements. This can involve incorporating advanced controls, encryption protocols, and data protection measures that align with standards in sectors like healthcare, finance, or government. If businesses don’t map to the specific industries they serve, they not only risk exposure but can be subjected to expensive penalties and brand-reputation damage.

Testing for Operational Readiness

Once strategies like HA and DR are implemented, it’s vital to test their capabilities – not just once, but repeatedly throughout the year. This will help ensure that plans will work in a time of crisis or unpredictability. It’s no easy feat to withstand disruption, whether it’s a cyberattack or weather-related incidents, so business-critical systems must be designed and executed to their strongest and most resilient potential. Even with HA and DR in place, operational readiness depends on how well and how often these strategies are validated and refined.

Deploying real-time monitoring and rapid recovery can help businesses to minimize downtime and restore full application environments, keeping operations running smoothly. IT teams will be able to understand how multiple application components like storage, servers, and networks work together so they can bring operations back to full functionality. By conducting regular testing of recovery procedures with real-time monitoring, IT teams have an extra layer of protection to take action before disruption turns detrimental.

The threat landscape is only going to get more formidable – whether from cyberattackers harnessing the power of AI to more successfully dupe their targets, or weather systems having a greater impact on infrastructure. So, no matter the industry, implementing strategies designed around real-time resilience to protect ongoing operations should now be table stakes. This means planning for what’s possible, not just what is probable. The ability to respond quickly, recover fully, and protect sensitive customer data will set apart successful organizations and might be the ultimate difference in staying afloat if a crisis strikes. With the right planning and frameworks in place, businesses can be ready for what inevitably will come next.