It’s Time to Take Resilience Personally

In a recent blog post, I explored resilience as a central topic for Zscaler. At that stage we’d already released our Resilience Factor research, which highlighted the state of cyber resilience strategies within global businesses and put forward a more proactive ‘Resilient by Design’ approach as the next cyber security imperative. But I also previewed some further work we were undertaking on personal resilience.

Why is a technology company looking at personal resilience you might ask? 

Connecting resilient teams with business continuity

At Zscaler, we believe that the best cyber resilience strategies feature three key elements: processes, technology, and people. However, while companies understand only too well how technology and operational processes affect continuity strategies, that last element is frequently overlooked. 

And that is a critical misstep. Resilience is an inner strength that prepares individuals and teams to navigate challenges and quickly bounce back. In today’s ‘when not if’ cyberattack reality – where our previous research showed us that 60% of IT leaders expect to experience a cybersecurity failure within the next six months – personal resilience has become a non-negotiable for employees at the frontline of digital defense. And there’s a proven link between this trait and business performance. In fact, studies have shown that resilient employees are almost twice as likely to be motivated and productive than their non-resilient peers.

Put simply, business leaders who invest in cultivating the resilience of their people and teams – combined with efforts to address its causes from a technology and process perspective – will have a competitive advantage. At Zscaler we want to empower our customers with this advantage, helping them move forward with confidence, no matter what threat or disruption they face

Fostering resilience within your team

So how do you design your environment to foster resilience, both for yourself and your team – and what do you need your people to be resilient against? To help you get started, we’ve created two key resources:

The Missing Link: Why Investing in the Resilience of Your People is Imperative for Business Continuity: Firstly, we’ve teamed up with professional coaching experts Positive Intelligence to create a practical roadmap for strengthening resilience as a core leadership skill. Complemented by valuable insights from our survey of 200+ IT and security professionals across EMEA, the roadmap focuses on integrating resilience into personal habits, team dynamics, and company culture.

The Personal Resilience Superpower Quiz: To help identify the resilience “personality types” within your team, we’ve developed the Personal Resilience Superpower Quiz. In just 12 quick questions, you’ll uncover your superpower, potential watch-outs, and strategies to enhance collaboration. Beyond individual advice, you’ll also learn how the four resilience types can work together to create a team that’s prepared for anything.

As a Cool Commander, the description of facing problems head-on and going after challenges confidently and in control definitely resonates with me. So it was interesting to read how other personas like the Practical Problem Solver can be vital to sense-check my fast-paced approach.

Facing the future

For over 18 years, Zscaler has offered cloud-based services to protect enterprise networks and their data. Based on this wealth of experience, we know firsthand the risks organizations face by not investing in their front-line employees' resilience as well as not adequately protecting their business.

Our mission this year is to help enterprises unlock “The Resilience Factor”, which we define as the unique ability of a business (or an individual employee) to withstand adversity, adapt operations, and be ready to thrive in the face of any challenge. With 47% of the IT professionals telling us they feel only somewhat resilient, and 51% believing their organization doesn’t care about personal resilience, we think it is an urgent one.