Turning risk into resilience: A blueprint for business continuity

How prepared is your organization for the unexpected?

From severe weather and cyberattacks to unforeseen operational disruptions, disaster preparedness is no longer optional—it's essential. In our FlexTalk webinar, Mastering disaster preparedness: Lessons from the front lines of risk and resilience, Flexential experts Michael Fitzgerald, Senior Director of Engineering, and Julie Hattle, Director of Enterprise Risk and Resilience, shared decades of insights to help organizations take control of risk and build robust resilience strategies.

If you missed the live session, you can still watch it on-demand—and trust us, this is one webinar you’ll want to see.

Watch the webinar on-demand now

Planning for the unthinkable

Every organization faces risk. But the difference between surviving and thriving during disruption lies in your strategy. Julie and Michael emphasized the importance of starting with a solid foundation: understanding your risks, documenting your contingency plans, and preparing for impact—not just events.

Rather than planning for every potential scenario (which is nearly impossible), they recommend a modular approach. This means identifying how key aspects of your organization—People, Places, Platforms, Providers, and Processes (the "Five Ps")—could be affected, and building strategies to protect and recover each of them.

Key takeaways you can use today

Here are six essential insights from the session:

1. Start with strategic risk identification: Use the “Five Ps” framework to assess vulnerabilities across your workforce, facilities, systems, third parties, and operational workflows.
2. Distinguish between disaster recovery and business continuity: DR is about restoring technology and infrastructure. BC includes the broader picture—ensuring people and processes can operate amid disruption. Both are crucial and interconnected.
3. Plan for impact, not just events: Don’t get stuck trying to predict every disaster. Instead, plan for outcomes like data loss, infrastructure downtime, or loss of access, and be ready to respond regardless of the cause.
4. Document everything: From playbooks to procedures, written plans help you stay calm, prepare yourself to support yourself when you are stressed, and make decisions during a crisis.
5. Test, test, and test again: Regular testing is non-negotiable. Tabletop exercises, failover drills, and emergency response tests ensure your team knows exactly what to do when it matters most.
6. Understand the backup vs. DR gap: Backups are useful for data retention and compliance, but they may not support fast recovery of critical systems. Disaster recovery solutions must be tested and capable of meeting recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs).

Real-world stories and lessons learned

The webinar included real-life scenarios from Julie and Michael’s careers that demonstrated how plans evolve through experience:

• A Vermont office affected by weather had to send an untrained staffer across the country to a DR site, highlighting the need for personnel planning and geographic diversity.
• A company with untested backups faced days of downtime and lost revenue when a critical workload failed, underscoring the danger of assuming backups are enough.
• Even lessons from unrelated industries, like how post-9/11 evacuation protocols evolved, show how past events shape smarter planning.

Each story reinforced one truth: testing and iteration are key to resilience.

Ready to strengthen your strategy?

Flexential Professional Services offers deep expertise to support your disaster preparedness—from risk assessments and strategy development to DR testing and execution. We also offer complimentary data center tours to demonstrate our geographic diversity, connectivity, and redundancy in action. If you're ready to reduce risk and boost business continuity, our team is here to help.

Don’t wait for a disruption to test your plan. Watch the webinar and take the first step toward mastering your disaster preparedness strategy.