Cyber, physical and supply-chain resilience has risen steadily up the board agenda since the Middle East crisis. Greater C-suite scrutiny has exposed a longstanding corporate grey area: no single function has wanted ultimate accountability, while departments remain unclear about who owns personnel information and who is responsible for its accuracy. As cyber and physical attacks become more frequent, investors are asking tougher questions and senior leaders are under pressure to provide credible answers.
Strategic risk
CEOs and executive teams are now raising the same questions around workforce safety and accountability that CSOs have pursued for years. That wider attention is changing how the issue is framed: it is no longer treated solely as a security challenge, but as a duty-of-care obligation and a strategic risk that impacts operational continuity—the language most likely to command C-suite action.
Newly exposed failings
Restrata’s white paper on lessons from the Middle East crisis identifies weaknesses that are not new, but have now been brought sharply into focus. Despite transformative advances in technology, the fundamental structural problem of inaccurate data and limited people visibility remains unresolved. That is unacceptable both for the safety of personnel on the ground and for continuity of trade, particularly as major crises appear to be occurring far more frequently. Geolocation can no longer be reserved for employees in traditionally high-risk locations; in today’s volatile environment, conflict can emerge anywhere, so organisations must be ready everywhere.
Extra burden on CSOs
As both external and internal threats multiply, CSOs must protect a growing organisation, a larger asset base and an expanding set of demands. Security and resilience teams are, however, typically defined by agility and a readiness to adapt. Their ability to succeed ultimately depends on the quality of their people and the tools available to them.
Finding the answers
When a crisis requires intervention to protect people, large volumes of information must already be available for rapid processing and analysis. Bringing that information together is time-critical: recent events in the Middle East have shown that places once considered safe, including Dubai, can face risk overnight, leaving teams little time to respond.
Teams need to know whether employees or family members have medical requirements that could be affected by a blockade, or mobility needs that must shape an evacuation plan. They must also assess whether moving people to a neutral location will make them safer or expose them to greater danger, and identify who is travelling into or out of the affected area at that moment.
AI – the CSO’s fast-track toolkit
Integrating AI into resilience software can make the platform more responsive while performing the essential work of consolidating disparate data streams, formats and sources into a coherent operational picture.
Human-first AI supports the operator rather than replacing them, applying an organisation’s own data and rules to reduce the risk of hallucination. An AI alert assistant, for example, can generate and distribute an emergency mass notification about a developing incident in each recipient’s relevant language and preferred channel, whether email, WhatsApp, Teams or SMS. Combined with an open ecosystem of threat feeds and a rules engine that determines which threats require action and whom they affect, this capability enables CSOs to respond with greater speed, accuracy and confidence.
Data detail
Data is the foundation of this approach. It must be robust and accurate, and security leaders need to know where critical information is held and exactly which sources the AI uses to inform its outputs. With that assurance, they can trust the system’s interpretive capabilities. Tasks that once required extensive manual work across several systems can then be managed through an intuitive interface with agentic support, allowing teams to concentrate on strategy and the decisions that keep people safe.
Achieving that level of accuracy requires preparatory work. The information needed to account for an organisation’s employees is often fragmented, outdated or stored in incompatible formats. Security teams have long faced the slow, difficult task of assembling people data, often without clarity over which function owns the responsibility.
Staying on track
Any organisation introducing AI must ground it in strong datasets and ensure there are comprehensive guardrails. Without both, the technology risks producing decisions built on false assumptions.
A practical first step is to map the maturity of the organisation’s security technology, resilience tools and data environment. That assessment helps prospective adopters understand where an open security system, with AI acting as the connective layer, can add value. It also allows AI to be introduced in ways that complement existing operations and establishes a stronger foundation for future success.
Life critical
Resilience and security protect people, preserve operational continuity and strengthen supply chains. As the issue gains prominence in the boardroom, organisations are seeking resilience software that can adapt as their needs and the threat environment evolve. AI integration is creating new budget opportunities, while security is increasingly recognised as a contributor to retention and organisational value rather than simply a cost. Together with open, provider-agnostic technology, it gives organisations a genuine opportunity to take control of how they build and scale resilience—helping to keep people safe wherever they are. Operational Resilience now carries value, not just expense.
