Companies face many risks. Every day, there are reports about cyber attacks, power failures or other scenarios in which companies’ continued  business activities are threatened.

These risks can have various causes. e.g.:

• Political environment – such as a trade conflict or a shift in a country’s political focus from open markets to isolationism
• Technological environment – e.g. cyber attacks in an increasingly digitized business world
• Legislative environment – e.g. influence of EU legislation on individual countries as we saw with the GDPR
• Environmental factors – such as climate change and the resulting natural disasters or extreme weather conditions
• Global economic environment – such as dependence on global supply chains and financial markets

If a company knows and is able to assess its own risks, this is the first step towards a corporate resilience strategy with appropriate precautionary measures and a quick and appropriate reaction.

This quick check and your implementation of any actions identified will give you the assurance that your organisation will, for example:

• Have a robust process for identifying new and changing business continuity risks and their sources,
• Have a process in place to ensure any risks are addressed by well-documented controls,
• Have a process in place to deal with any crises as they arise,
• Make sure that all employees are aware of their obligations and have the skills required to meet them.