Global conflict and geopolitical tension are increasingly shaping the operating environment for UK businesses. Many organisations now ask us the same question: “What do we do if…?”
Although the UK is unlikely to experience direct physical impact, global conflict can have significant indirect effects on operations, supply chains, people, technology and commercial relationships. Your Business Continuity Plan (BCP) should recognise these pressures and prepare your organisation to respond confidently.
Supply Chains: Where UK Businesses Usually Feel It First
This is typically the most immediate impact of global conflict. If you depend on materials, components, or logistics channels from affected regions, disruption can be rapid and expensive. It’s worth noting that not every supplier is critical — but the ones that are must be understood in detail.
A resilient supply chain strategy should explore:
- Which suppliers are truly critical to maintaining service
- How long you can tolerate loss of supply from each one
- What alternative sourcing options exist
- How much buffer stock makes sense for your business model
- Where such stock should be stored to ensure resilience
- Whether product specifications could be adapted in an emergency
The goal is flexibility, supported by pre‑planned decisions rather than reactive scramble.
Looking Beyond the UK: Risks to Global Sites
If you operate internationally, conflict can immediately affect your ability to access or use overseas facilities. Factories, logistics hubs, shared service centres, or sales offices in affected regions may face disruption ranging from short-term closure to total loss.
For continuity, the important thing is understanding where you are exposed. Identify which overseas locations support critical services, and what the business would do if those sites were suddenly inaccessible. Many organisations assume they can simply “shift capacity”, but that only works if the strategy is planned and validated ahead of time.
Cyber Threat Escalation: A Fast-Moving Continuity Risk
Periods of global conflict almost always coincide with an increase in cyber activity. Even when the conflict is geographically distant, the UK often sees a rise in state‑linked cyber operations, opportunistic ransomware attacks, and disruption attempts aimed at critical infrastructure or widely‑used cloud platforms. These threats move quickly and can cause outages that feel just as disruptive as physical events.
For continuity planners, the key is recognising that cyber incidents are no longer solely an IT security problem — they are a core continuity scenario. A large‑scale cyber attack can halt production, stop customer communication, disrupt logistics, or take out a critical system with no warning.
When preparing your BCP, consider:
- Your ability to operate manually if critical systems go offline
- How long the business can tolerate loss of major platforms such as ERP, CRM, finance or manufacturing systems
- Whether offline or degraded procedures have been tested recently
- The resilience of your backups — are they segregated, accessible, and restorable during a crisis?
- Dependencies on third‑party technology providers who may be more vulnerable than you
- How incident coordination and communication would work if email, Teams or phones were unavailable
Cyber disruption often spreads faster than traditional continuity scenarios and can last much longer. Including realistic cyber‑failure scenarios in your planning ensures your organisation can respond decisively during periods of heightened geopolitical tension.
Your People: Understanding the Human Side of Disruption
People risks are more nuanced but still highly relevant. Staff living in or connected to conflict‑affected regions may experience heightened stress, travel disruption, or unavailability. Even if the organisation is UK‑centred, this can influence workforce stability.
From a continuity perspective, focus on the operational impact rather than the personal circumstances (which are rightly handled through HR and pastoral support). Consider whether critical job roles or production teams are concentrated in particular communities, and whether that could create a single point of vulnerability during prolonged global disruption.
Technology and Cloud Dependencies: The Hidden Exposure
Today’s IT environments rely heavily on distributed global infrastructure. While it’s unlikely that a major cloud provider would cease service due to conflict, geopolitical tension can still trigger issues such as:
- Loss of a regional data centre
- Restrictions on data movement
- Rising service costs
- Hardware or chip shortages
- Route disruptions that impact network latency or resilience
Continuity planning is not about predicting dramatic scenarios. It’s about understanding how reliant you are on certain regions, what your technical options are if a cloud region becomes inaccessible, and how long meaningful recovery actions would take. For many organisations, simply articulating the realism and cost of “reversing out” of cloud reliance can be eye‑opening.
Customers and Partners: Commercial Impacts with Continuity Consequences
Global instability can reshape your commercial landscape quickly. If major customers operate in affected regions, you may see demand fall away. If key partners or distributors are exposed, your own services may falter as a knock‑on effect.
This isn’t strictly business continuity, but it is resilience. We encourage organisations to assess:
- Whether customer concentration creates vulnerability
- How reliant you are on partners or channels located in at‑risk regions
- What short‑term support you could offer affected partners to keep supply or service flowing
Commercial changes often become continuity issues when they affect your ability to deliver critical services — so it’s important to join the dots early.
Conclusion: Plan for Indirect Impacts, Not Headlines
Global conflict rarely affects UK organisations directly, but the indirect consequences are real, material and increasingly common. A resilient BCP should help you understand where you are exposed, how quickly disruption could affect you, and what practical strategies will protect your operations.
