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Operational Leaders

From risk to resilience

For operational leaders, risk is part of daily reality – embedded in systems, suppliers, processes and people. Keep performance steady when the unexpected hits. We help you connect strategy to execution, building resilience through routine operations, supply chain visibility, financial control and compliance discipline.

Explore the drivers of operational confidence:

Cyber

Supply chain

Regulatory

Working Capital

Cyber When trust becomes the target

Cyber risk lives in your systems, processes, supply chains and front-line decisions.

Ransomware, supply-chain breaches, IT and operational technology (OT), and critical infrastructure attacks can halt operations and damage customer trust in hours, driving the need to ensure resilience is embedded into processes, technology, suppliers and culture – not treated as a separate compliance exercise.

We help you move from siloed, reactive security to integrated operational resilience designed to protect performance and service continuity, because resilience isn’t about IT firefighting, it’s about maintaining ‘business as usual’ when disruption hits.

Why it matters

That shift is business-critical because uninterrupted service is now expected – customers, investors, and regulators demand reliable delivery even in the face of attack or disruption. At the same time, growing supply-chain dependencies amplify risk – critical third-party platforms, logistics partners, and cloud providers have become integral to operational resilience. When cyber-driven outages occur, the impact is severe – disruptions to production, technology, and services can cost millions, breach contracts, and trigger insurance claims or regulatory action.

Pressures and priorities

  • Do we know which business services, facilities, data and suppliers are mission-critical for customer delivery and do we have visibility of cyber threats that could impact these?
  • Have we mapped dependencies across our supply-chain and technology environments and tested these against cyber attack exposure?
  • Are incident-response and continuity plans for our critical functions and third-party partners current and rehearsed?
  • Do our cyber controls and monitoring processes give us timely visibility of potential cyber attacks in daily operations?
  • Can we provide the c-suite, board and regulators with comprehensive and reliable evidence of control effectiveness and resilience readiness?
  • Are we aligning spend and resources to the operational areas that represent the highest risk to customer service and brand?
  • Critical technology infrastructure exposure, growing regulatory expectation for effective cyber controls and resilience.
  • Supply-chain interdependency and systemic risk and increased cyber attack targeting of shared service providers and cloud platforms.
  • Increasing cyber attack sophistication and impact severity through cyber crime industrialisation.
  • AI-driven threat detection and response, accelerating the shift to automated triage and playbook-driven recovery.
  • Insurance and liability pressures with the need for documented evidence of resilience to secure good cover and meet policyholder requirements.
  • Regulatory convergence on operational resilience, integrating cyber, third-party and business-continuity standards.

Operational resilience is about absorbing shocks and recovering fast. It needs:

  • Integrated risk and control frameworks: unifying IT, operational technology, third-party and process cyber risks.
  • Preparedness and rehearsal: practising real-world cyber attack scenarios, not just tabletop compliance.
  • Real-time situational awareness: actionable information that links cyber threat intelligence to business impact.

Business-critical focus

Cyber risk management prioritises the systems, processes and suppliers that underpin essential services and revenue.

Resilient supply-chain ecosystem

Contracts, due-diligence, assurance and monitoring activities ensure that vendors and outsourced partners meet agreed resilience and recovery standards.

Integrated incident-response and continuity

Playbooks are rehearsed across business units and with key partners, covering detection, escalation, containment, communication and recovery.

Risk-based investment in controls

Budget and resources go first to high-impact controls – technology cyber controls, user awareness, identity and access management, detection and security operational capability.

Continuous testing and assurance

Pen-tests, red-team exercises and functional recovery drills provide evidence of readiness and improvement over time.

Streamlined processes and modern architecture

Shift towards cyber security frameworks that increase resilience, simplify control environments, leverage automation, move towards zero-trust and leverage technology advancements that are easier to secure, maintain and govern.

Operational metrics and reporting

Dashboards visualise cyber risk and exposure, control dependencies and improvements, incident trends and response and recovery performance to business outcomes such as service uptime, compliance and cost.

Culture and capability

Leaders promote a security-aware operational culture, with defined responsibilities, cross-functional cooperation and accessible guidance for staff.

From safe enough – to truly secure

Offensive security – global manufacturer and distributor

“We worked with the client to turn cyber assurance from theory into proof. By simulating real-world attacks and showing how adversaries could move through their environment, we helped their teams see exactly what mattered most. They now have practical confidence, not assumptions, that their operations can withstand attack and keep running.” Sheila Pancholi, Consulting Partner.

Explore our success story

We help you to embed cyber resilience into everyday routines so it’s real, practical and demonstrable:

  • Operational resilience assessments: mapping critical services, interdependencies and vulnerabilities across processes, technology and supply chain.
  • Third-party assurance programmes: risk criteria, vetting and improving supplier resilience, with ongoing monitoring and reporting.
  • Crisis-simulation and recovery exercises: develop response plans and testing under realistic stress to highlight gaps in response and escalation.
  • Risk-based controls optimisation: helping leaders focus budgets on the most effective preventive and detective measures.
  • Metrics and reporting design: building consistent data flows that support both operational decisions and board-level oversight.
  • Integration with enterprise risk and compliance frameworks: ensuring operational insights feed into enterprise-wide governance.

The front line of cyber resilience lies in the processes and partnerships that keep your business running. Operational leaders who integrate resilience into daily risk management, supplier oversight and incident readiness not only reduce exposure but also protect customer trust, minimise downtime and support business performance.

Take the next step. Talk to our experienced cyber experts who have developed experience over hundreds of engagements and who have done this at scale. Explore how strategic alignment and empowered teams can help your organisation stay ahead of evolving threats.

Sheila Pancholi

Consulting Partner – Technology Risk Assurance

Contact Sheila

Risk and Governance