The Resilience Reset: Why CIOs Must Prepare for the Inevitable Outage
Eighty-eight percent of IT and business executives anticipate another major IT outage on par with last July’s CrowdStrike disruption within the next year. This isn’t a question of if, but when. The era of believing you can prevent all outages is over; the focus has decisively shifted to how quickly organizations can recover – and a worrying number aren’t keeping pace.
From Prevention to Recovery: A Fundamental Shift
The CrowdStrike incident, which impacted hospitals, airlines, and financial institutions, served as a brutal wake-up call. As Amanda Fennell, CIO and CISO at Prove, puts it, the conversation moved from “Can we stop everything?” to “Okay, how fast can we recover?” This isn’t a new concept in cybersecurity – resilience has long been touted as crucial – but the scale of the CrowdStrike outage forced a reckoning. Many organizations had prioritized security over preparedness for service disruptions, a gap highlighted by a recent PagerDuty survey.
The Single Point of Failure: Knowing Your Critical Vendors
The CrowdStrike outage underscored a harsh reality: modern businesses are deeply reliant on a complex web of third-party vendors. This creates inherent vulnerabilities. The next major disruption won’t necessarily come from a direct attack; it could stem from a failure within your supply chain. Identifying those critical vendors – the ones representing potential single points of failure – is paramount. Resources are finite, so focusing on the most impactful dependencies is essential.
Beyond SLAs: Demanding Transparency
Simply reviewing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) isn’t enough. CIOs must actively demand transparency from their vendors regarding their risk mitigation strategies. “It’s upon the person who’s paying for it – the buyer, the consumer – to demand that transparency and validate the resilience claims,” Fennell emphasizes. This means asking tough questions, conducting thorough due diligence, and understanding the vendor’s recovery capabilities.
Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3: The Importance of Continuous Validation
Resilience isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it initiative. Incident response and business continuity plans must be living documents, constantly updated and rigorously tested. What happens when a critical vendor experiences an outage? Do you have failover mechanisms in place? Can you maintain communication with stakeholders even if your primary systems are down? These aren’t hypothetical questions; they require concrete answers.
Regular “tabletop exercises” – simulated outage scenarios – are crucial. Eric Johnson, CIO of PagerDuty, likens it to hitting the gym: “If you test it often, you’re strong and you’re ready.” Frequent testing ensures that the right people understand their roles and responsibilities, and that processes hold up under pressure.
Building Bridges: The Power of Internal and External Relationships
Outages aren’t solely an IT problem; they’re a business problem. CIOs need strong relationships with customer-facing teams to develop effective communication strategies. A clear, timely, and transparent communication plan is vital for managing customer expectations and minimizing reputational damage. Thomas Phelps, CIO and SVP of corporate strategy at Laserfiche, stresses the importance of having playbooks in place to reach out to customers, employees, and other stakeholders.
Extending these relationships beyond the organization is equally important. Cultivating direct connections with key personnel at critical vendors – beyond the standard account management channels – can provide a valuable escalation path during a crisis.
The Evolving CIO Role: Resilience as a Core Competency
The increasing complexity of the IT landscape, coupled with the growing threat of disruptions, means that resilience is rapidly becoming a core competency for CIOs. It’s no longer enough to simply keep the lights on; CIOs must proactively prepare for the inevitable. This requires a shift in mindset, a willingness to invest in resilience-building measures, and a commitment to continuous improvement.
As Johnson notes, navigating this complex environment is both exciting and challenging. The proliferation of technologies like AI adds another layer of complexity, but also presents opportunities to enhance resilience. The key is to embrace a proactive, forward-thinking approach.
What steps is your organization taking to bolster its resilience in the face of increasing IT disruptions? Share your strategies and insights in the comments below!
