The global business environment is increasingly being shaped by geopolitical tensions. Events such as the Ukraine war, escalating US-China competition, and the Israel-Palestine conflict have disrupted markets, destabilized supply chains, and impacted energy security on a global scale.
In this environment, European business leaders are particularly exposed due to their deep integration with global trade networks and reliance on energy imports. Surveys show that a large number of European organizations have reported elevated losses due to geopolitical risks, at times exceeding $50 million: demonstrating that effective risk mitigation is no longer just about managing immediate threats, it’s about building long-term resilience.
Organizations with well-implemented resilience frameworks can adapt to challenges, protect their people and assets, and maintain operational continuity even in the face of extreme uncertainty. To support leaders dealing with the unpredictability caused by new and emerging geopolitical tensions, we’ve identified three key focus points to withstand the volatile environment as we enter 2025:
1. Understand Geopolitical Risks, and Their Impacts
First things first. Geopolitical risks arise from political events, tensions, or shifts that disrupt economic activity and drive uncertainty. These risks are growing increasingly complex due to the interconnected nature of global economies and the rise of hybrid threat vectors. As we look ahead, the key events defining the global geopolitical landscape include:
- The Russia-Ukraine Conflict: Sanctions and pipeline disruptions have triggered an energy crisis across Europe, straining industries and supply chains alongside driving macro-economic instability.
- Middle East Escalations: Tensions across the region threaten to disrupt key trade routes and send energy prices skyrocketing further. The ripple effects are felt globally, and directly impact Europe’s energy-dependent industries.
- US-China Tensions: Trade wars and technological decoupling threaten global supply chains, with sanctions complicating operations. For companies tied to both the US and Chinese markets, navigating these tensions feels like walking a tightrope.
- New Emerging Threats: The threat of hybrid warfare – including cyberattacks, disinformation, and economic coercion – continues to escalate, amplifying uncertainty and exposing businesses to new vulnerabilities.
In short, geopolitical risks are creating cascading challenges that no single department or quick fix can address. Therefore, businesses need an integrated, forward-looking approach to resiliency management.
2. Define the Role of Risk Teams in Resilience Building
Addressing geopolitical risks requires a shift in focus from reactive crisis management to proactive resilience-building. When security leaders prioritize resilience over short-term solutions, they enable their teams to be better equipped to adapt to disruptions of all scales, minimize downtime, and protect their employees and assets for the future.
Resilience is about more than survival – it ensures continuity in operations, compliance with regulatory requirements, and the preservation of stakeholder trust. For European companies in particular, resilience has become a business imperative in an environment where political and economic uncertainty can disrupt operations at any moment.
While enterprise frameworks are valuable aids, it’s the leadership of risk managers that brings these strategies to life. The role of risk teams in defining and implementing resilience objectives is diverse, and should encompass actionable steps deriving from best-practice frameworks, including:
- Assessing Risks Holistically: Security leaders should act as a keystone to bridge gaps between departments, ensuring that geopolitical risks — whether to operations, compliance, or finances — are fully understood, communicated and prioritized in a cross-functional way.
- Breaking Down Silos: By fostering collaboration across critical functions including security, IT, compliance, and operations, security leaders can streamline response times, plans, and prevent duplication efforts.
- Aligning Strategy with Risk Appetite: Risk leaders play a key role in ensuring that business decisions balance opportunity and caution, helping teams navigate high-stakes environments with greater certainty, without losing sight of objectives.
- Enhancing Agility: Above all else risk teams should be the primary champions of preparedness, driving initiatives like scenario planning and crisis simulations to anticipate disruptions, adapt processes and embed response capacities.
Ultimately, risk teams are the architects of resilience, turning challenges into opportunities for growth and competitive advantage. Mastering the ability to act decisively and foster a culture of risk awareness is what ensures long-term success in a volatile world.
3. Undertake Practical Steps
While clearly defined enterprise frameworks are essential to embed long-term strategic resilience, the practical steps which underpin them are equally vital and more importantly achievable in the immediate term. Best practice measures that security leaders can take now to strengthen the resilience of their organizations include:
1. Update Your Threat Risk Assessments (Regularly): As a baseline, teams need to conduct regular risk assessments to identify emerging geopolitical threats and evaluate their potential impacts on key assets across the organization. This ongoing process helps pinpoint vulnerabilities in operations, supply chains, and employee safety, ensuring the organization stays ahead of evolving risks. By scheduling these assessments periodically, security teams can proactively address any changes in the geopolitical landscape. Before they escalate.
2. Scenario Planning: Scenario planning involves exploring potential “what-if” situations to anticipate risks and prepare for their cascading effects. This approach allows risk leaders to stress-test their strategies and operations against a range of geopolitical scenarios. For example, a company might ask: What would happen if energy prices tripled due to prolonged sanctions on Russia? The resulting analysis can help uncover vulnerabilities in production costs, logistics, or market demand, prompting critical decision points on alternative energy sources or pricing strategies. Alongside this scenario planning also teams to highlight interdependencies within an organization, ensuring that risks in one area — such as supply chain disruptions — do not undermine the broader business strategy.
3. Developing and Updating Crisis Response Plans: Developing comprehensive crisis response plans is essential for security leaders to ensure a coordinated and effective response in the event of a geopolitical disruption. These plans should cover various scenarios, such as political instability, supply chain disruptions, or employee evacuations, and need to be updated regularly alongside threat assessments to reflect changing conditions. Testing these plans through simulation exercises also ensures they are actionable, and that key personnel are aware of their roles in a crisis.
4. Developing Contingency Plans for Critical Supply Chains and Operations: Geopolitical events, above almost any other risk type, have the capacity to disrupt supply chains and key operations on a global scale, so it’s essential for risk owners to develop robust contingency plans. This includes identifying alternative suppliers, establishing backup routes for logistics, and creating redundancies in key functions. By diversifying and securing critical resources, key teams can reduce the impact of geopolitical instability on their operations and maintain business continuity.
As we enter 2025, geopolitical uncertainty is a defining challenge for leaders globally. However with a structured and proactive approach, risk teams can drive logical proactive steps to build resilience, safeguard operations, and turn uncertainty into an opportunity for strategic growth. By integrating geopolitical insights into strategic decision-making, breaking down silos, and fostering a culture of risk awareness, leaders can ensure their organizations are prepared to anticipate, absorb, and adapt to disruptions with confidence and agility.
Enterprise Frameworks are a critical tool in this approach. And that’s where Human Risks can help: by providing practical tools to support implementing effective strategies. At scale.
Interested in learning more about how Human Risks works with security teams to implement best practice enterprise security and resilience frameworks via our integrated platform? Connect with the team for a demo:
