Disruptionresistant

Disruptionresistant is a term used to describe systems, processes, or organizations that are designed to withstand or quickly recover from disruptions in operation, whether due to hardware failure, natural disaster, cyberattack, or supply interruptions. It emphasizes resilience and continuity of function across varying disruption scenarios.

Origin and usage: The term is a compound formed from disruption and resistant. It is used across fields such as information technology, industrial engineering, and business continuity planning to describe resilience-oriented design and preparedness strategies.

Core principles: Redundancy, diversity, fault tolerance, modularity, rapid failover, and continuous monitoring are central to disruptionresistant design. These principles aim to minimize downtime and maintain service levels even when components fail or external conditions deteriorate.

Applications: In IT networks, disruptionresistant architectures employ redundant servers, load balancing, and data replication across geographically separated sites. In manufacturing, multi-sourcing and buffer stocks reduce exposure to supplier shocks. In energy systems, microgrids and automatic switching enhance reliability during outages.

Metrics and evaluation: Common measures include recovery time objective (RTO), recovery point objective (RPO), and overall availability. Time to detect and respond (TTDR) is often tracked to assess the speed of disruption handling.

Criticism and limitations: Building disruptionresistant systems can increase cost and complexity, with diminishing returns if not aligned to risk priorities. There is also a risk of false security if resilience measures are poorly designed or not properly tested.