This year’s DRJ Fall conference focused on building tomorrow’s resilience today. In many respects, the future is here. From cyber security incidents to climate risks, business continuity and resilience professionals face an expansive risk landscape. Fortunately, the future of technology enablement is also here, particularly with Generative AI.
OnSolve by Crisis24 was honored to present a solution track on tabletop exercises, participate in a panel discussion on strategies for navigating risk and present on Generative AI applications in resilience. I enjoyed the feedback and many discussions on how the industry, colleagues, and customers are exploring, piloting and implementing technology solutions in resilience.
Here are my thoughts from DRJ Fall on building tomorrow’s resilience with technology:
People, Process and Technology: This common framework for building organizational resilience came into sharp focus in Dallas. It’s key to have balance across all three. As organizations explored AI applications, there were many discussions about how this impacts people and processes. Technology is an enabler, but we must also invest in the right people and build the right plans, SOPs and processes for our organizations.
Empower Decision Making with Technology: The best use cases for AI and technology solutions focused on empowering faster, more informed decision making. With accelerated discovery of risk and streamlined communications our organizations can identify, communicate and act faster when facing risk. Aligning actions to business objectives will focus our efforts, strengthen our business value, and guide the right applications of technology as an enabler.
Next-Level Exercises: Running exercises, particularly tabletop exercises, were a major theme of the conference. We can run faster, more agile tabletop exercises with AI. Generative AI can assist with scenario design, content generation, and communications. There’s still value in running functional exercise but this can often require time to build capacity and resources to drive buy-in and facilitate the exercise. Phase in testing with shorter, custom-built exercise scenarios that can be quickly socialized and facilitated.
Leveraging Historic Data: Since presenting OnSolve Risk Intelligence at DRJ Fall 2023, it’s been enlightening and enriching to see how our customers are leveraging historic data to improve resilience. At DRJ Fall 2024 we discussed using historic data to enrich site risk assessments, recognize patterns of risk, and develop early warning signals of a crisis. I also enjoyed discussing the use of historic data to build authentic, realistic exercise scenarios and injects.
Building Familiarity with Generative AI: For the last general session, OnSolve and Crisis24 leaders presented the case for Generative AI applications and responsible use of AI for resilience practitioners. This stirred much discussion at the lunch tables and workshops about how to introduce AI to our teams and establish opportunities to explore this technology. A DRJ Spring poll showed that 72% of respondents had beginner-level awareness of AI tools. The same poll at DRJ Fall showed that 71% of respondents had beginner-level awareness. My hope is that we dramatically improve awareness and familiarity with AI tools by DRJ Spring 2025.
As risk becomes more complex, AI has the potential to help risk professionals manage and mitigate risk – but only if it’s used responsibly. Learn more about responsible AI in our ebook.
The Risk and Resilience Professional’s Guide to Responsible AI
The Early Adopters are Rapidly Innovating: While roughly 70% of practitioners consider themselves beginners, approximately 1 in 5 practitioners are regular users of Generative AI. These early adopters have already established processes using LLMs – and are looking for their next use case: Create new tabletop exercises from Generative AI? Of course. Summarize meeting minutes? Absolutely. Review, summarize and find gaps in existing BIAs at scale? Done. This group is looking for new use cases and innovating nearly every week. The implication for the industry is clear: to continue to serve this group, solution providers have to lead the way in communicating new methods - and value.
The best AI models are trained on lots of highly specific, detailed, and fit-for-purpose data. If we want the best AI in our industry, we need to educate AI on our industry standards and practices. Teach generative AI about our standards and best practices, show it mature plans, SOPs, and help it understand what constitutes a helpful alert – teach it how organizations communicate in a crisis.
Ten years ago, executives started insisting on data rich solutions and data-based decision making. Big Data was all the rage, and we scrambled to work as an industry to keep up. In a few short years executives will be insisting on AI efficiencies. When that time comes, if it hasn’t come already, we want to tell a powerful story about how business continuity and resilience teams use AI and how it’s optimizing human only tasking.
To help you get started, OnSolve by Crisis24 is providing a complimentary copy of Principles for Using Generative AI for Intelligence and Security Teams and The Risk and Resilience Professional’s Guide to Responsible AI.
The mission can feel daunting and the path forward unclear. If you’d like to continue this discussion, provide feedback or are looking for assistance, OnSolve is here to help.
