Resilience by design: Building connected ecosystems for the age of disruption

An Economist Impact report, supported by Telstra International
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What's this report about?

Digital resilience is no longer about preventing disruption. It is about keeping the business running when disruption occurs. 

Many organisations invest heavily in cybersecurity and modernisation. Yet they remain vulnerable to cascading failures from supplier incidents, infrastructure instability, accountability gaps and human error. 

Enterprise responses to digital resilience must evolve. Digital resilience must be designed across infrastructure, leadership and the workforce. It must also extend to partner ecosystems. 

Our report, developed with Economist Impact, surveyed 1,420 senior executives across 11 Asia-Pacific markets, with benchmarks from the United States, United Kingdom and Germany. It assesses confidence in digital resilience and tracks results through a multifaceted Digital Resilience barometer. It outlines the current state of digital resilience and what comes next.

Key findings

  • Ecosystem resilience is weakest

    Only 15% have first‑hand supplier visibility, leaving critical interdependencies exposed to disruption.

  • Plans fail in practice

    Although plans exist, only 23% of responses went to plan, hindered by limited scenario testing (66%) and siloes (39%).

  • Risk management is reactive

    Just 10% of organisations monitor risks more often than quarterly. 

  • Leadership accountability is uneven 

    Only 27% of boards regularly review digital resilience plans. In 47% of organisations, one function owns digital resilience.

  • Low confidence in external enablers

    While 57% have confidence in existing cybersecurity policies, there is low confidence in networks, power, regulation, and digital talent.

  • Workforce preparedness lags

    While 95% of enterprises provide cybersecurity hygiene training, other capability building is limited.

Executive guide

What do leaders need to know, and what should you do next?

This guide distils the key research findings and discusses their implications for strategy and risk. Created for executives, it can help inform decisions and provides practical actions to improve digital resilience.

Read the executive guide now (PDF, 939.2KB)

Interested in deeper insights and peer learnings?

Resilience by Design report

 The full report explains why digital resilience must extend beyond cybersecurity and internal controls. It also shows how connected ecosystems – spanning networks, cloud, suppliers and partners – help sustain operations through disruption.

Highlights include:

  • The Digital Resilience barometer benchmarks resilience maturity across markets and industries.

  • Why ecosystem resilience is emerging as the weakest point in many strategies.

  • How organisational, leadership and cultural gaps undermine incident response, even with strong technology investment.

  • What business and technology leaders must do to build digital resilience into systems, processes and partnerships, rather than reacting after disruption.

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