A system that applies the principles required to enforce the sustainability of an ecosystem, here-in we refer to business ecosystem. It studies the management systems of the flow of data and information throughout the business and its operating boundary. It also seeks to understand the processes which govern them in a business ecosystems, and its network of interactions.

A business ecosystem is a community or network of organizations that include, and not limited to suppliers, distributors, customers, competitors, government agencies and so on, and it involves strategy, people, process, technology, information/data in the delivery of a specific product or service through both competition and cooperation. More importantly, an ecosystem follows the law of nature, of which there’s no ending but it continues to radically evolve and organically change.

Each ecosystem has its invariably unique nature and it delivers different products and services. Like our business community, each organization has their unique eco-environment that produces different products or offers different services. Nevertheless, every business shares, in common a set processes and cyclical flows linked together by its network of interaction, and that significantly includes data and information flow in the recent eras of technology disruption.

Every ecosystem is constantly affected by both external and internal factors; our business is of no difference. They are subjected to external factors such as global economy, supply-chain condition, currency fluctuation, law and regulation, threat and risk that come in various form – physical and logical. Invariably, every entity is subjected to such disturbances and they are also in the process of recovering from the past incidents. While internal factors coexist, they not only control ecosystem processes but also controlled by them and that serves as a feedback loop. An organization without an effective internal management system of controls, the external factors that generate or feed as an input resource will inundate the internal systems or render the internal process failure in handling or controlling such influx or disturbance.

Ecosystems are dynamic entities. They are subjected to periodic disturbances and concurrently in the process of recovering from some past incidents. When it becomes disturbed, it responds by moving away from its initial state. It exhibits the tendency to remain close to its equilibrium state, despite that disturbance, while it remains in it speeds of returning to its initial state after disturbance which we call resilience. On the alternate, the capacity of an ecosystem to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing changes, to retain essentially the same function, structure, and identity.

To achieve that, an ecosystem adopts a few principles, one of which is the long-term sustainability of producing the goods and services, and the other is the use of an adaptive management, which is a structured and interactive process of robust decision making (transparency and independence focused) in the face of uncertainties. It aims to reduce uncertainties over time through systemic and integrated monitoring which constantly accrues information and data needed to enable constant learning, improve long run future management, or to effect a change.

Every business is not too far away to take on a journey and build your own ecosystem that exhibits the attributes and characteristics mentioned above. It starts with a few small steps in looking at one’s current exposure, as well as risk and security baseline, and evolve that to adopt the precept of information and technology Governance, Risk and Security management that strengthens your internal systems.

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