Why Integrated Risk Management is the Only Path to Resilience

This insight captures the fundamental shift occurring across European governance, where every employee, leader, and stakeholder plays a part in identifying, assessing, and responding to threats that cascade across departments. This is the premise of #RISK, Europes leading risk focused expo, taking place on 12-13 November at ExceL London. The two-day event is designed to break down the obsolete walls separating Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) from Cyber, Privacy, and Strategy, offering a holistic blueprint for enterprise resilience.

The Strategic Agenda: From Geopolitics to the Boardroom

The first core challenge for any senior leader is mastering external shocks. This year has provided stark proof of how geopolitical events can rapidly cascade across compliance domains: a single international incident can disrupt supply chains, destabilise investment, and tank reputation overnight. #RISK is dedicated to horizon scanning, providing the foresight required to move from reactivity to strategic preparedness.

This essential intelligence is encapsulated in sessions that move beyond technical defence to strategic resilience. Attendees will tackle “The Perfect Storm: 2027 and the Global Polycrisis Risk.” Led by Derek Leatherdale (Senior Geopolitical Risk Adviser, Sibylline), this session delves into the current trajectories and risk indicators, examining the convergence of great power rivalries and economic fragility that could create a major inflection point. Furthermore, the economic threat is quantified in the panel, “Flashpoints & Fallout: How Trump’s Tariff Regime Threatens Europe’s Economic Backbone,” bringing together experts like Allie Renison and David Henig to map which industries are on the edge and what tools the UK and EU truly have to respond without sparking runaway escalation.

Driving this strategic discussion is the need to redefine Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) itself. The revered “Father of GRC,” Michael Rasmussen, joins UK ERM Expert Emma Price for a fireside chat, “Risk Is Our Business,” tracing the evolution of risk from mere business continuity to today’s integrated resilience mandate. They tackle common pitfalls like fragmentation and “compliance posturing,” exploring why the strategic shift in language from “risk” to “resilience” resonates more strongly with boards and helps unify siloed disciplines. For any leader preparing for new assurance mandates (like Provision 29), this session provides the chart for steering away from orbiting checklists toward forward-looking strategy at speed.

Mastering the Digital Battleground: Cyber, AI, and Financial Crime

The core foundation of resilience lies in cybersecurity, a fact reinforced by the dedicated content across all five stages at #RISK Europe, led by the Cyber GRC Stage. Here, the agenda tackles immediate, costly, and evolving threats head-on.

One of the most alarming digital challenges is addressed in the keynote “Ctrl+Alt+Chaos: How Teenage Hackers Hijack The Internet.” BBC Cyber Correspondent Joe Tidy leverages his unique investigative access to uncover the shocking reality of Gen Z cybercrime. He maps the social and economic pipeline that converts a talented gaming enthusiast into a sophisticated, monetised criminal—a necessary intelligence brief given that groups like Lapsus and Scattered Spider are increasingly responsible for breaches at major organisations like M&S, Co-op, and JLR.

Beyond the threat actor lies the technology itself. The adoption of AI and digital assets has created a compliance urgency that cannot be ignored. The session, “AI, Privacy and Power: Is the GDPR Fit for an AI Future?”, dissects the legal and ethical frameworks needed to manage AI adoption, a critical question for every DPO and GC in light of the EU AI Act. This ethical mandate is further explored in “Ethics at the Edge: Tackling Bias in Automated Decision-Making.” Simultaneously, the rise of digital finance is scrutinised in “Crypto at a Crossroads: Stability, Supervision, and Systemic Risk,” and the immediate threat to the treasury is detailed in “Financial Crime Risk: From Crypto Laundering to AI-Driven Fraud.” These sessions arm attendees with the intelligence to prevent financial crime and manage the digital trust challenges presented by systems like the proposed “BritCard or Big Brother? The UK’s Digital ID Dilemma.”