Operational Resilience FRAMEWORK

Strengthening resilience throughout the financial system is one of the strategic commitments for Central Bank of Ireland, Financial Conduct Authority (FCA - UK), Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA - UK)

What does it entail?

Operational resilience is a journey requiring significant initial effort, including time-intensive preparation and the creation of foundational deliverables. While the beginning may be challenging, establishing a solid foundation simplifies the process over time. With effective checks and balances in place, resilience can seamlessly integrate into daily operations, enabling organisations to adapt, recover, and thrive amidst disruptions.

Identify & Prepare

This pillar involves identifying critical business services and setting impact tolerances to understand the maximum acceptable disruption. It includes mapping interconnections and dependencies, and conducting scenario testing to prepare for potential disruptions. Governance and risk management frameworks are crucial to ensure readiness.

Respond & Adapt

This pillar focuses on the ability to respond effectively to disruptions through robust business continuity and incident management plans. It emphasizes the importance of communication plans to keep stakeholders informed during a disruption. Flexibility and adaptability are key to managing unexpected events.

Recover & Learn

This pillar ensures that organizations can recover from disruptions and restore critical services promptly. It involves conducting lessons learned exercises to continuously improve resilience strategies. The goal is to embed a culture of continuous improvement and learning from past disruptions.

SolutionOut Expertise

With experience in partnering with over 60 organizations in Ireland and UK to develop and sustain their Operational Resilience Frameworks, SolutionOut is equipped to guide your organization through this critical journey. Our expertise ensures that your business can identify, respond to, and recover from disruptions effectively. We provide tailored strategies to enhance resilience and safeguard your operations.

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Practical Steps to Develop your Framework

Step 1: Identify Critical Services & Tolerances

Working directly with Board of Directors and Management team, Solution Out works to identify critical services using specific criteria and quantitative approach. We engage in workshops with the board and management team to identify third parties and other actors involved. Through detailed analysis, we pinpoint priority risk factors that need mitigation to ensure operational resilience. The board holds ultimate responsibility for overseeing the firm's operational resilience, ensuring robust protection of critical services and effective management of disruptions.

Step 2: Process Map, Analysis, Identify Dependancies

As a second step, experts from SolutionOut will meticulously map critical processes, identifying all interlinkages with third parties and critical assets. This comprehensive approach includes creating detailed third-party and asset registers to ensure thorough documentation and oversight. By analyzing these processes, we identify critical risks and scenarios that require preparation, ensuring your organization is equipped to handle potential disruptions. This structured methodology enhances operational resilience, safeguarding your business against unforeseen challenges.

Step 3: Scenarios and Controls Testing

Develop Scenarios: Create severe but plausible scenarios from and overall operational and systems perspectives, such as cyber-attacks or natural disasters, to test the resilience of critical services.

Test Impact Tolerances: Assess the firm's ability to maintain operations within predefined impact tolerances during these scenarios.

Analyse Results: Evaluate the outcomes to identify vulnerabilities and areas for improvement.

Implement Improvements: Use insights from scenario testing to enhance resilience strategies and mitigate identified risks.

Step 4: Embed the learnings in the Framework

Incorporating incident and change management, business continuity planning (BCP), ICT, cyber resilience strategy, communication plans, and learnings from mapping exercises into a living framework involves several key steps:

Incident and Change Management: Integrate robust incident and change management processes to swiftly address disruptions and adapt to evolving threats, ensuring minimal impact on operations.
Business Continuity Planning (BCP): Develop comprehensive BCP strategies to maintain critical services during disruptions, leveraging insights from mapping exercises to enhance preparedness.
ICT and Cyber Resilience Strategy: Implement advanced ICT and cyber resilience measures to protect against cyber threats, ensuring the security and integrity of systems and data.
Communication Plans: Establish clear communication plans to keep stakeholders informed during incidents, fostering transparency and trust.
Continuous Learning: Embed a culture of continuous learning by regularly updating the framework based on lessons learned from mapping exercises and real-world incidents.

Step 5 & Beyond: Continuously Learn & Evolve

SolutionOut will work with you on the evolution of the Operational Resilience Framework and supporting you through the journey:

Continuous Improvement: Regularly updating and refining resilience strategies based on lessons learned from past disruptions and scenario testing
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Feedback Loops: Implementing structured feedback mechanisms to capture insights from incidents and near-misses, ensuring they inform future resilience planning
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Training and Awareness: Conducting ongoing training and awareness programs to keep staff informed and prepared for potential disruptions
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Adaptability: Ensuring the organization remains flexible and can adapt to new threats and changing environments

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