FORTUNE Magazine Features Council’s Enterprise Resilience Project

If you want to know the risks a multinational faces, you can look through market reports, SEC filings and press releases—or you can just read a newspaper. It’s a perilous world, and we all know it. Almost every day there are acts of terrorism, pandemics, computer viruses, storms and other disasters that can whipsaw an organization. But at least there is one upside to all the bad news: Companies can take action, preparing themselves in ways that may not always prevent disaster but can mitigate the damage to their bottom lines. By assessing the risks of today’s business environment, they can put contingency plans in place. It’s a no-brainer. Right?