Modern regulatory expectations have shifted focus from traditional business continuity planning toward the broader concept of operational resilience. Regulated institutions under frameworks like the European Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Resilience Rules must look beyond individual system uptime metrics to protect the continuity of entire critical business services.
Critical Business Service Baseline ---> Define Impact Tolerances ---> Map System Lines ---> Run Severe Stress Tests

Operational resilience frameworks require institutions to manage compliance across four core steps:
  1. Identify Important Business Services: Mapping end-to-end workflows required to deliver critical services to external clients (e.g., executing a point-of-sale retail payment).
  2. Establish Impact Tolerances: Setting strict, unyielding metrics that define the maximum tolerable level of disruption a service can sustain (e.g., service must not be unavailable for more than 4 consecutive hours, regardless of the cause).
  3. Mapping Interdependencies: Documenting the collection of people, processes, technical systems, data assets, and third-party vendors that support each critical service.
  4. Severe but Plausible Testing: Stress testing the service against extreme scenario parameters—such as the simultaneous loss of a primary vendor and a key processing facility—to confirm the organization can remain within its impact tolerances during major disruptions.

 
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