Disaster Recovery Journal Summer 2026

FROM THE PRESIDENT’S DESK

AI in Resilience Leadership A rtificial intelligence has officially moved beyond a future trend in resilience. It is now shaping nearly every conversation hap pening across business continuity, disas ter recovery, operational resilience, cyber One of our featured articles, written by Neil Sahota, examines how AI may finally help orga nizations stop repeating the same failures after disasters by turning response and recovery data into institutional intelligence.

BOB ARNOLD, MBCI Hon.

resilience, crisis management, and risk leadership. At DRJ Fall 2026, we received more than 100 session submissions focused directly on AI, plus another hundred that referenced it through auto mation, analytics, cyber defense, operational intel ligence, or crisis response. That level of focus is unprecedented. No other technology shift in recent memory has accelerated this quickly or touched so many areas of resilience at once. The reality is simple. AI is becoming a force multiplier. Organizations are already using it to analyze operational data faster, improve situational aware ness during incidents, identify vulnerabilities across vendor ecosystems, automate repetitive tasks, opti mize recovery planning, and strengthen exercises and after-action reviews. Used correctly, AI can help resilience professionals spend less time chas ing data and more time making informed decisions. At the same time, it is impossible to ignore how disruptive and difficult this technology is becoming to govern. One of the most common statements circulating today is that “AI will not take your job, but some one using AI might.” There is truth behind that. The professionals and organizations learning how to responsibly apply AI will move faster, identify risks sooner, and likely outperform those still wait ing on the sidelines. But there is another side to this equation. AI is evolving so quickly that governance, regu lation, and organizational guardrails are struggling to keep pace. Many organizations are deploying AI faster than they fully understand the risks associ ated with the data feeding it, the accuracy of its out puts, or the implications of relying too heavily on automated decision-making. That tension between opportunity and risk is exactly why this issue of Disaster Recovery Journal spends so much time exploring AI from practical operational resilience perspectives.

Another strong article by Ghonche Alavi explores why AI resilience is rapidly becoming a board-level governance issue, particularly as orga nizations face growing risks from misinformation, deepfakes, and AI-enabled manipulation. Those themes continue throughout this edition with other articles focused on the reliability of AI outputs, and using AI to audit resilience programs. We also explore organizational blind spots, common planning mistakes, third-party risk, evolving CISO responsibilities, modern disaster recovery strate gies, and career leadership within the profession. AI may be dominating headlines, but it is not replacing the fundamentals. Organizations still face mounting pressures from ransomware, cyberattacks, third-party depen dencies, geopolitical instability, supply chain dis ruptions, severe weather events, and increasing regulatory scrutiny. Operational resilience still depends on leadership, communication, gover nance, preparation, and people who can make informed decisions under pressure. That balance is also reflected in the DRJ Fall 2026 agenda. AI will be covered extensively throughout the conference, but so will cyber resilience, operational resilience maturity, crisis leadership, third-party risk, cloud recovery, executive communication, supply chain resilience, governance, business continuity planning, and disaster recovery mod ernization. The conversations are becoming more interconnected every year because resilience itself is becoming more interconnected. As we continue “Moving Resilience Forward,” the theme of DRJ Fall 2026, the challenge ahead is not deciding whether AI matters. That decision has already been made for us. The real challenge is learning how to use it responsibly, govern it effec tively, and combine it with the operational disci pline and leadership that have always been at the core of strong resilience programs.

PRESIDENT bob@drj.com

6 DISASTER RECOVERY JOURNAL | SUMMER 2026