Disaster Recovery Journal Summer 2026

This acceleration compresses crisis timelines and erodes the familiar cues leaders rely on, particularly during high pressure situations. For business continu ity and risk professionals, the reality is that AI-driven threats can no longer be contained within the category of “IT risk.” They now present a broader governance concern capable of disrupting operations, distorting markets, increasing regulatory exposure, and damaging trust and reputa tion. Despite this shift, cybersecurity, and AI governance often remain isolated within technology functions. Many organizations still treat AI resilience as a technical matter or “problem for IT” rather than a founda tion of enterprise stability. Phishing and social engineering attempts have affected nearly every organization, yet fewer than half maintain a tested incident response plan. Even where such plans exist, many have not been updated to reflect the speed, precision, and psychological manipulation AI now enables. As a result, a widening gap has emerged between the velocity of threats and the readiness of organizations to confront them. AI and the Manipulation of Reality AI-generated misinformation requires governance frameworks rather than purely technical solutions. Forward-leaning orga nizations are beginning to expand the scope of their board’s risk or audit com mittee to include oversight of informa tion integrity and executive impersonation threats. These committees help define decision rights, verification authority, and reporting expectations so misinformation incidents are treated with consistency and as enterprise level risks. To operationalize this, some orga nizations are creating information risk command structures that activate during crises. A designated lead is responsible for authenticating executive communica tions and challenging fabricated narra tives. This governance approach is often reinforced through enterprise-wide verifi cation rules, clearly defined single sources of truth, mandatory out-of-band confirma tion for high-risk instructions, and cultural norms that give employees permission

Why AI Resilience is a Governance Imperative up to Board Level

10 DISASTER RECOVERY JOURNAL | SUMMER 2026 By GHONCHE ALAVI A

I is reshaping the threat landscape faster than orga nizations are adapting. Attackers ranging from organized crime groups to state-backed actors are now able to compro mise identity, distort real ity, and undermine the decision-making structures upon which business continuity depends. Recent industry data indicates 62% of organizations experienced at least one deepfake-enabled social engineer ing attempt in the past year, illustrating how quickly this threat has become main stream.