Rapid digitalization has its casualties. However one survey is now showing that heavy investments in digital resilience can gain worthwhile ROI
In an Oct 2022 survey of digital resilience with over 2,100 security, IT and DevOps leaders at large organizations across more than six industries in 11 countries, including Singapore, Australia, India and Japan, a software firm has observed that respondents whose enterprises invested heavily (and successfully) on digital resilience saved an average of US$48m yearly on downtime costs.
Leaders for organizations surveyed in Australia and Japan reported less effectiveness with digital transformation projects, indicating that over half of their projects had sustained positive impact over the last two years (27% and 24%, respectively, versus 35% for all other countries surveyed). Japan respondents were also less likely to feel fully prepared to adapt to disruption from a recession (45% versus 52% for all other countries).
Among India respondents, their organizations experienced the highest amount of unplanned downtime per year of all countries surveyed: 342 hours versus 238 hours on average across all countries surveyed. However, India respondents were also the most likely to feel fully prepared to adapt to disruption from a recession or from competitors (66% and 69%, respectively versus 52% and 50% in other respondents).
Of all countries surveyed, respondents from Singapore experienced the lowest amount of unplanned downtime per year (188 hours versus 238 hours on average), albeit with the highest downtime cost per hour (US$634,680 versus US$365,040 on average among other respondents).
Digital resilience is generally understood to mean the corporate ability to prevent, detect, recover and respond to events that have the potential to disrupt business processes and services. Almost half of the survey respondents indicated they were not fully ready to adapt to disruptions from either a recession (48%) or competitors (50%). In the meantime, macro market events, security breaches, infrastructure outages and other challenges that can bring organizations to a standstill show no sign of letting up.
The survey, commissioned by Splunk, has led to the authors recommending IT/security leaders to strengthen cross-functional crisis management; leverage machine-learning and auto remediation; and empower security and IT teams to accelerate “release velocity”.
