The most dangerous dependencies are often second- or third-level ones. A practical method for identifying shared infrastructure, common-cause failures, apparent redundancies, and points of concentration that can trigger cascading effects.

Energy, telecommunications, cloud services, transportation, and payment systems are critical dependencies that an organization only partially controls. For a Resilience Manager, the real challenge is determining how long the company can continue to operate when one of these infrastructure components fails and how to prevent a single outage from causing a domino effect.

Critical infrastructure is becoming more interconnected, more digital, and more vulnerable to ripple effects. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026 highlights how aging infrastructure, climate change, electrification, digitalization, and geopolitical tensions are turning infrastructure resilience into a systemic problem.