Achieving Operational Resilience with Simon Hodgkinson

Ex-bp CISO Simon Hodgkinson argues disaster recovery is too narrow for today's threats: operational resilience must span governance, business continuity, and third-party supplier risk.

A practical look at the ROI of fast AD recovery: quantifying lost operations while AD is down (Baltimore's $18M hit), why ransomware crews target AD objects—group accounts, GPOs, SYSVOL, DCs—and why continuity plans must cover AD.

A survey of 350-plus security professionals finds a preparation gap: 97% call AD mission-critical, 84% expect severe impact from an outage, yet only 3% are extremely confident in fast recovery and over half never tested their AD recovery plan.

Ransomware makes total AD meltdown realistic, but recovery practice has barely changed in 15 years; DXC's Guido Grillenmeier lists AD recovery dos and don'ts—from detailed plans to offline backups.

Cyberwar readiness starts with identity: Semperis CEO Mickey Bresman urges testing AD recovery plans at least every 13 months by restoring production backups into an isolated lab.

The case for fast AD recovery: assume attackers are inside, test your RPO/RTO assumptions, and automate restoration—claimed to speed recovery 80-85% and cut week-long outages to under a day.