Critical work & commitments
Identify the products, services, and processes that need protection. Assess how an interruption would affect customers, employees, revenue, or public service—and how those consequences grow over time.
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Strategy & Resilience / Risk Mitigation
See the exposure.
Protect what matters.
Disruption becomes harder to manage when critical dependencies are poorly understood. We help your organization identify exposure—from cyber threats to supplier failures—weigh practical safeguards, and prepare a response your people can use.
Start with what matters
Know what could interrupt
the work that matters most.
A supplier failure, an unavailable system, or the loss of a key capability can affect more than one department. We connect those dependencies to customer commitments, service delivery, financial exposure, and your organization’s mission.
“ISO 31000 provides principles, a framework and a process for managing risk.”
Iron Sights Consulting brings an organization-wide perspective to operational risk, grounded in established risk-management and business-continuity practices. The work is tailored to your industry, operating environment, and the consequences of disruption.
Where the operation is exposed
Trace reliance on suppliers, materials, equipment, people, facilities, systems, and logistics. Examine concentration, capacity constraints, long replenishment times, and readiness for site closures, process transfers, or supplier changes.
What can actually recover
Review current safeguards, inventory coverage, backup arrangements, recovery assumptions, and previous incidents. Distinguish a documented control from one that has been checked and can work when needed.
The result is a prioritized view of exposure with supporting evidence, assumptions, and gaps. Ratings use agreed criteria for likelihood and impact, with uncertainty made visible; the color on a chart is only the starting point for a decision.
Cyber threats & business continuity
A cyber incident
is a business interruption.
Ransomware, phishing, compromised accounts, and incidents involving technology providers can disrupt operations, expose sensitive information, and damage trust. We help leadership connect cyber exposure to business priorities and recovery decisions.
What is at stake?
Identify critical systems, data, and service providers. Work with technology and security leaders to understand the operational consequences of losing access, exposing information, or relying on a compromised third party.
Are responsibilities clear?
Coordinate a review of access safeguards, staff awareness, provider responsibilities, backup arrangements, and incident escalation. Turn identified gaps into prioritized actions with owners and management decisions.
Can the operation continue?
Agree on essential workarounds, recovery priorities, decision authority, and communications. Use a tabletop scenario to test coordination and request evidence of backup restoration and recovery testing from technical owners.
Iron Sights Consulting facilitates business-risk assessment, preparedness, and cross-functional follow-through alongside your technology and cybersecurity specialists. Those specialists lead technical security assessments, protective controls, and incident response. Relevant guidance includes the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0.
Supplier resilience
Different responsibilities.
One business outcome.
Quality, Procurement, Supply Chain, and Operations see different parts of supplier risk. A sound decision brings those views together around safe, reliable supply and the organization’s overall exposure.
Decision discipline.
Quality may seek to restrict or replace a supplier because of recurring findings. Procurement and Supply Chain may be developing alternatives while protecting material availability. Reducing the supplier base can simplify oversight while increasing concentration; adding suppliers creates value only when they have the qualifications, capacity, and readiness to supply.
We bring the relevant functions together to test assumptions, examine evidence, and compare the full consequences of each option. Quality and delivery trends, capacity, transition costs, continuity, customer impact, and reputation inform a documented decision—with clear ownership and review points.
Build a controlled path forward.
Compare supplier development, corrective action, additional qualified sources, inventory measures, and a managed transition. Consider the cost and timing of each option alongside the exposure it reduces and the new dependencies it creates.
Agree on decision rights, evidence required, owners, and transition gates. Quality and other responsible specialists retain approval and disposition authority; required safety, quality, and regulatory conditions remain prerequisites for use.
Illustrative scenario
When a transition outruns readiness.
Consider an organization consolidating operations to reduce costs. The plan retires an existing capability before the replacement site or supplier has demonstrated repeatable performance. Experienced people leave, essential process knowledge is lost, and available inventory cannot cover the delay.
The resulting disruption could bring backorders, lost revenue, recovery costs, and damaged customer confidence. A decision that appeared financially attractive can put continuity and the organization’s mission at risk.
Our approach: establish evidence-based readiness gates before closure or cutover. Confirm that the replacement can meet quality, capacity, and service requirements; capture critical knowledge; and agree on inventory coverage, fallback options, and approval authority across functions.
Decision discipline in practice: weigh expected savings against the full transition cost, disruption exposure, and impact on the people you serve. Review progress against agreed gates before releasing the existing capability.
Related support: Procurement & Sourcing covers supplier evaluation, responsible sourcing, and performance scorecards.
A focused engagement
From exposure
to an actionable plan.
An illustrative four-to-six-week review focuses on a defined operation, supplier category, or critical process. We agree on scope, access to information, participants, and deliverables before work begins.
WEEK 1
Set the scope
Establish priorities.
Confirm objectives, critical commitments, risk criteria, decision authority, and existing controls. Review incident history and identify the people closest to the work.
Working output
Agreed scope, critical activities, information request, and assessment criteria.
WEEK 2
Map & assess
Follow the dependencies.
Map essential inputs and capabilities. Assess disruption scenarios, business impact, current safeguards, and recovery assumptions with functional owners.
Working output
Dependency map and initial risk register, including evidence gaps and immediate priorities.
WEEKS 3–4
Compare & decide
Choose practical controls.
Evaluate options against cost, feasibility, lead time, and expected reduction in exposure. Establish owners, response triggers, escalation paths, and management decisions.
Working output
Prioritized recommendations, continuity actions, and an implementation roadmap for approval.
WEEKS 5–6
Validate & refine
Work through the response.
Where included in scope, facilitate a tabletop exercise for an agreed scenario. Record gaps, refine the plan, and establish a review cadence and follow-up responsibilities.
Working output
Exercise findings, updated response guidance, and an owner-led action plan.
Timing depends on scope, data quality, site access, and participant availability. Supplier qualification, new capacity, systems changes, or physical recovery tests can require separate implementation work and longer timelines. Support for an active disruption is scoped around the immediate situation.
Continuity in practice
A response people
can put to work.
A plan needs clear triggers, accessible information, and people who know what they can decide. We help turn the assessment into usable response guidance and a routine for keeping it current.
Know when to act.
Define warning signs, thresholds, and escalation routes. Identify who confirms the situation, who authorizes a response, and how affected teams, customers, or other stakeholders receive updates.
Protect & recover.
Set recovery priorities and acceptable interruption periods with management. Document containment, workarounds, alternate resources, key contacts, and the conditions for returning to normal operation.
Test the assumptions.
Walk through a realistic scenario and check the handoffs. Track gaps to closure, validate critical arrangements with their owners, and refresh the plan as suppliers, people, systems, or operations change.
A tabletop exercise tests decisions and coordination. Live technical recovery, supplier validation, and physical tests are agreed separately with the responsible specialists. Management reviews the exposure that remains after controls and decides whether further action is needed.
The right perspectives
Shared understanding.
Clear accountability.
Executives, directors, managers, and frontline teams each contribute a different view. We involve the functions needed for the defined scope and make responsibility for decisions and follow-through explicit.
Executive sponsor
Sets priorities, confirms risk criteria, resolves cross-functional tradeoffs, and approves resources and material decisions.
Functional owners & frontline teams
Operations, Supply Chain, Procurement, and Quality contribute operating evidence and test whether proposed controls are workable. Technology and cybersecurity leaders join for cyber exposure and recovery planning; Finance, engineering, HR, legal, and compliance contribute as relevant.
Specialists & external partners
Provide technical judgments, qualification requirements, contractual input, and evidence of recovery capability. Suppliers and service providers participate when access and scope allow.
Iron Sights Consulting
Facilitates the assessment, connects evidence across functions, structures the options, and develops practical recommendations and response guidance with your team.
A usable outcome
What you receive.
The agreed engagement produces a clear basis for management decisions and a working set of priorities your organization can maintain.
- A concise assessment of critical activities, dependencies, and current control gaps.
- A prioritized risk register with owners, evidence, existing controls, and proposed actions.
- Practical options with cost, timing, feasibility, and remaining exposure made visible.
- Continuity and response guidance for agreed scenarios, including cyber disruption where scoped, with triggers and decision rights.
- An action roadmap with accountable owners, milestones, and a management review cadence.
- Where scoped, tabletop exercise findings and revisions to strengthen the response.
Your part in the work
What we need
from your organization.
The assessment depends on access to the work, candid input, and people who can make decisions. We establish these commitments at the start.
- A sponsor, a defined scope, and agreed decision and approval authority.
- Access to relevant supplier, demand, inventory, capacity, and performance information.
- Existing continuity and cyber-response plans, incident records, provider contracts, and control documentation.
- Time with functional owners and the people who perform the critical work.
- Specialist review of safety, quality, technology, contractual, and regulatory requirements.
- Management ownership of selected actions, resource decisions, and ongoing review.
Grounded in established risk-management & continuity practices
Our approach is tailored to the engagement, drawing on established guidance rather than applying the same checklist to every organization.
- ISO 31000:2018 — Risk management guidelinesGuidance for integrating risk assessment, treatment, communication, and review into organizational decisions. ISO 31000 is guidance, not a certifiable management-system standard.
- NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0A framework for understanding, prioritizing, and communicating cybersecurity risk across governance, protection, detection, response, and recovery.
- Ready.gov — Business emergency and continuity planningPractical continuity, communications, and recovery planning resources.
Protect continuity
Start with the exposure
you need to understand.
Tell us which operation, supplier dependency, or continuity concern needs attention. We will discuss a focused scope, the people needed, and a practical starting point.
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