Most UAE Firms Overestimate Crisis Readiness, Study Reveals
The UAE’s businesses, for all their confidence in being resilient, may not be optimally prepared for the next wave of disruption.
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Time and again, geopolitical tensions—among other external factors—have reshaped the Middle East’s business landscape. And every time, the ecosystem has bounced back well. However, the region’s businesses, despite their confidence in their resilience, may not be optimally prepared for the next wave of disruption. After all, there is a stark difference between resilience built on experience and resilience built on preparation.
According to new research by risk management firm Optro, only 19% of UAE organizations have a formal disaster recovery plan in place— against a global average of 31%. Notably, less than 40% of organizations reported establishing recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) for all critical business processes.
In contrast, nearly three-quarters (73%) of respondents were confident of their organization’s capability to meet established recovery objectives during a major disruption. Meanwhile, 79% were confident in their ability to demonstrate operational resilience compliance to regulators.
Yet when disruption actually strikes, the cracks begin to show. Of organizations that experienced major disruption in the past 12 months, 62% failed to recover within established RTOs, with roughly 35% exceeding their recovery targets by more than twice the planned timeline.
“The findings reveal a dangerous resilience gap. Many organizations have confidence in their preparedness, but confidence alone does not reduce downtime, protect revenue, or accelerate recovery,” said Richard Chambers, Senior Advisor, Risk and Audit at Optro and former CEO of The Institute of Internal Auditors. “Operational resilience is ultimately measured during moments of disruption, and the data suggests many organizations are discovering weaknesses only after an incident has already occurred.”
When the crisis hit, business continuity activation proved slow to kick in. Over four in ten organizations could not activate their business continuity management (BCM) plans within 24 hours, while only 15% were ready within the first 4 hours.
The lag time in recovery results in significant financial consequences. Over the past 24 months, over half (59%) of the organizations reported a loss of over US$500,000 as a result of several disruptive elements, including vendor outages, supply chain interruptions, IT and cloud service failures, and weather-related events. Among all, third-party outage or failure caused significant disruption to the operations of 82% organizations within the last two years, with 67% estimating the business impact exceeded $1 million.
Only three in ten UAE organizations have full visibility into BCM plans for critical vendors—the lowest figure globally and well below the international average of 49%.
“The organizations that recover fastest are rarely those with the most confidence. They are the ones that regularly challenge their assumptions through exercises, audits, and independent reviews long before disruption occurs,” added Chambers.
