Digital operational resilience is the ability of an organization to keep critical digital services running, or restore them quickly, when cyber incidents, system failures, third-party outages, or other technology disruptions occur. It goes beyond simple prevention: a resilient organization assumes disruption will happen and prepares to absorb it.
In cyber security, this matters because attackers often target availability as well as confidentiality and integrity. Ransomware, destructive malware, cloud outages, vulnerable suppliers, and rapid exploitation of newly disclosed flaws can all interrupt essential services. Strong resilience combines asset inventories, incident response playbooks, backup and recovery testing, patch prioritization, identity controls, and vendor oversight. In financial services and other regulated sectors, digital operational resilience is also a governance issue: leaders must prove that critical systems, data flows, and AI-enabled services can be monitored, contained, and recovered under pressure.