New Research on Digital Resilience Unveils Massive Opportunity for Organizations

Recent times proved the world is more resilient than we ever thought before. Despite economic and political uncertainty, and emerging from the challenges of a global pandemic, people everywhere showed they were willing to adapt and change for the future. On a broader scale, organizations were tested, needing to keep their digital systems afloat in the face of increasingly sophisticated threat actors, more frequent outages, and sky-high customer expectations. At Splunk, we conducted new research that examines how organizations are using digital resilience to not only bounce back, but move forward in these turbulent times. 

Today, Splunk published Digital Resilience Pays Off, a research report that explores how organizations are investing in critical digital resilience capabilities and the business impact. The global survey of more than 2,100 SecOps, ITOps and DevOps leaders reveals how some organizations stand to win in the face of disruption. 

Key findings include: 

• Organizations report an average of 10 days of unplanned downtime per year that negatively impacts revenue, customer experience or productivity
• Organizations with advanced digital resilience capabilities save an average of $48 million per year on downtime costs compared to beginning organizations
• Only half of all organizations are fully prepared to change how they operate and engage with customers during times of major disruption, either to address the demands of a recession (52%) or in response to competitors (50%). 

In my conversations with CISOs, CIOs and CTOs, digital resilience is top of mind as they develop their long term strategy and report out to their boards of directors. If you’re a technology leader, or interested in how organizations are staying competitive in today’s market, read on to learn how investing in digital resilience pays off. 

Rethinking Resilience

As the cofounder of a cyber intelligence company, I’ve seen first hand a major shift in how organizations do business today, accelerated even further by the pandemic. Digital no longer just supports organizations, in many cases it approaches 100% of customer and employee interactions. That means when disruptions hit, the stress on our digital systems has a huge impact across the entire organization.

Building a resilient enterprise today isn't just about finding the right talent or having a strong balance sheet. It requires capabilities to prevent, detect and respond to adverse conditions, system stressors and malicious compromises that threaten to disrupt the foundational digital resources that power business processes and govern critical data flows. Regulations like The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and guidelines from organizations such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are forcing organizations to acknowledge they are only as resilient as their digital systems.

That’s why it's time to break down silos across SecOps, ITOps, and DevOps. The recent uptick in infrastructure outages and security breaches has shown us limiting resilience efforts to one off projects or disaster recovery and business continuity planning isn’t nearly enough. Successful organizations are building a digital resilience strategy across these three functions, so they can get ahead of and overcome disruptions. 

Critical Capabilities For Resilience

When facing a rapidly changing landscape, we found advanced organizations have a significant advantage. How do they do it? They have critical digital resilience capabilities across visibility, detection, investigation, response and collaboration. 

Organizations that had greater success in achieving key business outcomes made sure to bring SecOps, ITOps, and DevOps teams together, particularly during crisis management. They also were able to predict and prevent incidents through cutting-edge technologies like machine learning and auto remediation. They also invested in accelerating their software release cycle by ensuring cross functional support. 

And the best part? All these capabilities lead to better business outcomes. Compared to beginners, advanced organizations not only saved on downtime costs, but also: 

• Were two and a half times more likely to report they were fully prepared to adapt due to the demands of a recession (78% vs. 29%) and disruption by competitors (77% vs. 30%)
• Reported twice the rate (53% vs. 25%) of digital transformation projects with sustained positive impact over the past two years.

From Surviving To Thriving

This new report is a must-read for anyone looking to make the case for investing in digital resilience. It shows that the most advanced organizations realize the ROI of resilience by minimizing downtime costs, adapting to change, and delivering successful digital transformation projects. Plus, they're exceeding their financial performance goals. 

In the coming years, I’m sure we’ll see some organizations not just survive these times, but thrive. 

For more on how organizations are dealing with disruption, and critical digital resilience capabilities, read Digital Resilience Pays Off.