Resilience Is a Board Imperative

If you serve on a board today, you already understand that cybersecurity and data resilience matter. The harder question is whether your organization can perform under pressure. Data resilience is no longer about having security alone; it is about whether systems and people can act when it counts, regardless of if they are going through a cyberattack, a vendor outage, or an internal failure. Rather, resilience is measured not by how well systems are defended, but by how effectively they bounce back. It’s the difference between downtime and continuity, confusion and coordination, risk and readiness. That is where the Data Resilience Maturity Model (DRMM) helps boards ensure they are governance‑ready. The DRMM turns resilience into a measurable capability, connecting strategy, people, process, and technology to outcomes the board cares about: continuity, compliance, and confidence.

When Pressure Hits, Performance Matters

The DRMM was developed to close the gap between perception and reality. This report showed that approximately 70% organizations believe they are “above average” in resilience; the DRMM shows that for most, this is not the case. Resilience begins with clarity. In many companies, different teams mean different things when they say “resilient.” Security focuses on preventing breaches, while Operations emphasizes uptime, Development prioritizes speed and features, and Compliance views controls through regulatory lenses.

In a crisis, these differences become fault lines: detection doesn’t hand off cleanly to restoration; technical recovery sequences don’t match business priorities; and third‑party obligations sit in a contractual gray space. The DRMM addresses these structural issues by aligning definitions and practices across the enterprise, including value pillars such as understanding, recovery, security, intelligence, and freedom. Having this shared understanding is the foundation for effective board oversight and risk governance.

• Ownership and governance: accountability that accelerates recovery Ownership is the next level. Boards should expect a single executive accountable for data resilience, cyber resilience, and business continuity with decision authority and budget across operations, security, and compliance. Without clear ownership, trade‑offs linger and recovery slows when decisions are needed most. The DRMM helps leadership define that role and the governance it requires, ensuring resilience is managed as a business‑critical capability tied to enterprise risk, ROI, and competitive advantage.
• Intelligent resilience: AI- and automation‑driven consistency and ROI Modern data resilience increasingly walks hand‑in‑hand with intelligent technology. AI and advanced analytics are reshaping monitoring, reporting, and response by surfacing weak signals before they become outages and automating repetitive steps that invite error under stress. The DRMM explicitly considers how intelligence and automation can reduce human fatigue, shorten recovery, and improve consistency. For boards, this is not a technical debate; it is a governance decision about investing in capabilities that make performance under pressure repeatable, scalable, and cost‑effective.

Evidence Builds Confidence: Test Like It’s Real

Testing under realistic conditions is where confidence is earned. Integrated drills should bring teams out of their silos to simulate cyber incidents, internal failures, and third‑party disruptions. These exercises must be measured against recovery commitments and business impact to give the board a clear view of where the organization stands. The DRMM encourages organizations to prove readiness with evidence: test results, gap analyses, and dated remediation plans with named owners. This is where boards can ask the most useful questions:

• Did we meet our recovery time and recovery point objectives?
• What surprised us?
• What will be different before the next quarter?

Next Steps for Boards: Driving Mature Data Resilience

Maturity will vary by industry and regulation. Highly regulated sectors may score higher in the DRMM due to compliance pressure, but every enterprise benefits from tailoring investments to its risk profile. The DRMM gives boards a way to benchmark by peer group, understand where gaps are most likely to impact performance, and justify funding with a measurable roadmap rather than a one‑size‑fits‑all checklist.

A pragmatic path forward:

• Establish a baseline with the DRMM Quick Pulse
• Confirm a single executive owner with cross‑functional authority
• Revalidate recovery priorities against current strategy and regulations
• Direct an integrated scenario drill that includes key third parties
• Review findings with a dated remediation plan at your next session
• Ask for a non‑technical dashboard that shows resilience as business outcomes, including recovery commitments met, mean time to recover, automation coverage, drill cadence and learnings, and third‑party readiness, and ensure it is reviewed between board meetings, not just during them

Conclusion

Cybersecurity defends against attacks. Data resilience ensures the organization can continue to operate and recover with confidence despite them. The DRMM converts resilience from aspiration to actionable governance by giving boards clarity they can oversee and a path they can execute, protecting enterprise value and strengthening competitive advantage.

Sources and further reading

Veeam blog: Q&A: Data Resilience Maturity Model — Your Questions Answered

Veeam blog: Data Resilience Maturity Model — An Industry Standard

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