Operational Resilience as Strategy: DORA, the UK, CPS 230, & the Road Ahead

Key Takeaways

• Resilience as Strategy: Operational resilience is no longer a compliance checkbox but a core business imperative tied to trust, survival, and strategic agility.
• Global Regulatory Convergence: Regulators worldwide (from the EU’s DORA to the UK, Australia’s CPS 230, and U.S. joint guidance) are aligned in demanding resilience as an enterprise-wide obligation.
• The Problem of Silos: Fragmented approaches across IT, risk, compliance, and procurement leave organizations exposed; orchestration is needed.
• Digital Twins as a Living Map: Digital twins provide dynamic visibility into dependencies, enabling disruption simulations and scenario testing.
• Agentic AI as Force Multiplier: AI augments human oversight, scanning for threats, suggesting remediation, and turning monitoring from reactive to proactive.

Deep Dive

In an era defined by disruption, resilience is no longer a side conversation in boardrooms, it is the conversation. Cyber incidents, technology outages, geopolitical instability, and supply chain fragility are not “if” events; they are “when” events. Regulators, investors, and customers all demand that you show us not only that you can take the hit, but that you can recover, adapt, and continue to deliver.

Operational resilience has therefore shifted from a technical compliance exercise to a strategic imperative. It is inseparable from business continuity, brand trust, and ultimately survival. Organizations that still treat resilience as a back-office checklist are already behind the curve.

The Global Regulatory Convergence

What is striking is how regulators across regions, industries, and even continents are aligning on this central truth. The frameworks differ in terminology, but the thrust is the same: resilience must be baked into governance, risk management, and oversight.

• United Kingdom: The FCA, PRA, and Bank of England expect firms to define important business services, set impact tolerances, and test against severe but plausible scenarios.
• European Union (DORA): The Digital Operational Resilience Act sets detailed requirements for ICT risk management, resilience testing, incident reporting, and oversight of third-party providers.
• Australia (CPS 230): Operational risk and resilience are embedded into governance, internal controls, and supplier arrangements.
• Beyond Finance: The EU’s NIS2 and Critical Entities Resilience (CER) directive extend obligations across digital infrastructure and other critical sectors.
• United States: Joint guidance from the Fed, OCC, and FDIC highlights governance, incident response, and interconnected critical operations.
• Asia-Pacific & Canada: Singapore’s MAS, Hong Kong’s HKMA OR-2, and Canada’s OSFI B-13 reinforce resilience testing, governance, communication, and assurance expectations.

The message is that resilience is a non-negotiable, enterprise-wide responsibility.

Breaking Down Silos

The challenge is that most organizations still approach resilience in fragments. Technology teams look after systems. Risk managers think in terms of continuity. Compliance departments chase regulatory checklists. Procurement manages vendors. Each does their job, but without integration the picture is incomplete and disruption does not respect organizational charts.

A cyberattack, for example, cascades from IT to customer trust to compliance exposure, often in the space of hours. Fragmented management leaves blind spots and duplicated effort, while the risks themselves cut seamlessly across domains.

This is where orchestration becomes essential. GRC 7.0 – GRC Orchestrate is about weaving governance, risk, and compliance into one coordinated framework, turning isolated practices into a cohesive operational strategy.

Digital Twins: Seeing the Organization as It Truly Is

Among the most transformative enablers of this orchestration is the digital twin. Unlike static CMDBs or risk registers, a digital twin is a living model of the enterprise—mapping assets, people, processes, suppliers, and dependencies into a dynamic system that evolves as the business does.

With this living map, organizations can:

• Identify interdependencies across critical services and third parties.
• Simulate disruptions and anticipate ripple effects.
• Test impact tolerances against regulatory benchmarks such as DORA or CPS 230.
• Translate technical vulnerabilities into executive-level decisions.

It provides not just visibility, but foresight and the ability to see how one weak link reverberates through the whole system.

Agentic AI: From Oversight to Foresight

While the digital twin provides structure, agentic AI brings vigilance. By continuously scanning for anomalies, learning from past events, and suggesting mitigation, AI amplifies human oversight.

It does not replace human judgment; it augments it, ensuring that resilience monitoring is adaptive, predictive, and never sleeps.

The endgame is simple but profound, i.e., resilience must be designed into the organization, not bolted on after the fact. This means aligning regulatory obligations with business processes, linking risks and continuity plans directly to services, and embedding resilience in the culture of decision-making itself.

When resilience is part of the organizational DNA, disruptions stop being existential threats and become challenges the business is prepared to meet.

The Prime Directive

The regulatory drumbeat is intensifying, but compliance alone is not the point. The point is survival, trust, and mission delivery. Organizations that orchestrate governance, risk, and compliance, powered by digital twins and agentic AI, are not just ticking boxes. They are building the agility and confidence to navigate the uncertain future.

The mandate is that resilience must be orchestrated, embedded, and continuously assured. Anything less leaves the organization unprepared in a world where disruption is guaranteed.

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