A new whitepaper report from Dataminr and Forrester Consulting has found that 40% of global risk and compliance decision-makers are improvising risk management. Titled Risk In A Real-Time World, the study surveyed 410 global risk and compliance decision-makers across the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand to evaluate current risk management priorities and practices, and how real-time information is used in risk management and crisis response.

The unpredictable nature of the last 13 months - and the sheer volume of unforeseen threats to corporate enterprises that have occurred - exposed major risk management, security and leadership gaps in organizations, illuminating the necessity of crisis preparedness for business resilience. 

And companies know this - in fact, 82% of risk professionals believe having visibility and insights around real-time information is more necessary today than ever before. Yet enterprises still struggle to implement. The study identified inflexible technology stacks and siloed processes as two key challenges:

• Only 29% of enterprise risk professionals feel “very confident” that they have the technologies to accurately obtain an early view of unexpected events.
• 7 in 10 enterprise risk decision-makers find access to real-time information to be siloed.

Between ongoing political tensions stateside, the evolving global COVID-19 pandemic and the concerning increase in natural disasters -- business decision-makers across functions and industries must be able to successfully prepare and navigate operations in real-time, though only 16% understand that “real-time information” is data from the past few seconds or minutes, compared to 75% who believe it is data from within a day or longer. 

Over half (52%) of global risk and compliance decision-makers find cross-functional collaboration challenging, and 50% find process efficiency challenging when it comes to operationalizing real-time information. 

Findings also suggest that real-time information is not reaching everyone who needs it when it comes to important response activities, such as informing crisis communications (31%), impacting response plans as events unfold (30%) and assessing impact (30%). Further, the research found that only 33% of organizations included the corporate communications department and 43% the human resources/employee experience group in their crisis response team(s).

“At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, enterprises all over the world realized their blind spots within risk management and security that ultimately threatened the safety of their people, operations, brand reputation and bottom lines,” said Ted Bailey, Founder and CEO of Dataminr. “In an era where organizations and leaders are now defined by how they respond to impactful, disruptive and divisive events, being caught unaware or unprepared can cause lasting damage to a company.”