Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming industries, and critical event management (CEM) is no exception. Yet, misconceptions about AI often overshadow its true potential to revolutionize how organizations manage risks, disasters, and disruptions. These myths have sparked skepticism and confusion, leaving many uncertain about AI’s true role in CEM. This blog addresses the top 10 myths surrounding AI in risk intelligence and crisis management. By separating fact from fiction, we’ll reveal how AI empowers organizations to make smarter, faster, and more resilient decisions.
Myth vs. reality
Myth #1: Automation removes human control over crisis management
Reality: AI enhances human decision-making. It doesn’t replace leadership; it provides faster, more accurate insights so decision-makers can act with confidence. A Forrester study found that organizations using AI-driven incident response reduce decision-making errors by 68%, allowing leadership to focus on strategy rather than firefighting.
Myth #2: AI can’t improve decision-making in crisis situations
Reality: AI accelerates response times by automating threat detection, response orchestration, and message dissemination. With AI, decision-makers get both speed and confidence, ensuring they act on the right intelligence at the right time.
Myth #3: AI in risk intelligence is just hype
Reality: Everbridge delivers risk intelligence 11 minutes faster using AI-powered automation. AI enables hyper-local insights, scales analysis beyond human capacity, and provides accurate, real-time risk assessment that decision-makers can trust.
Myth #4: AI in CEM is too complex and expensive for organizations to implement
Reality: Everbridge AI is purpose-built for ease of use. Customers don’t need data scientists – AI streamlines ORCA rule creation, incident response workflows, and resilience planning, ensuring fast implementation and immediate value. AI-powered CEM solutions integrate seamlessly with existing business operations. More importantly, the cost of implementation is far lower than the cost of a single major downtime incident. For every $1 invested in proactive resilience, companies save $7 in avoided losses (FM Global Resilience Index).
Myth #5: AI in CEM is just about speed – it’s not actionable
Reality: Everbridge AI doesn’t just accelerate processes – it provides precision, direction, and context. Our AI-powered platform helps organizations move from reactive crisis response to proactive resilience by automating the full CEM lifecycle. Everbridge is the only provider offering full-lifecycle AI-powered CEM, built specifically to handle physical and digital events with decision-ready risk intelligence.
Myth #6: Businesses that rarely experience major disruptions don’t need automation
Reality: The frequency of critical events has skyrocketed. Cyberattacks have increased by 38% year-over-year (Check Point Research), and supply chain disruptions are up 88% since 2020 (Resilinc). Organizations that plan ahead with automation avoid being caught off guard and significantly reduce financial risk.
Myth #7: Crisis response can be handed manually
Reality: Manual processes lead to delays, confusion, and financial losses. According to IBM, companies that take longer than five hours to respond to an incident experience 45% higher costs. AI-driven automation ensures immediate detection and response, cutting downtime by up to 75%.
Myth #8: Only tech companies need AI-powered risk management
Reality: Every industry faces disruptions—retail, healthcare, finance, logistics. In the manufacturing sector alone, unexpected downtime costs businesses an estimated $50 billion per year (Forbes Technology Council). AI-powered CEM helps all industries mitigate operational risks and avoid catastrophic losses.
Myth #9: Everbridge AI is just another automation tool
Reality: Everbridge has invested $1B+ in AI, decision-ready risk intelligence, and automation, making it the industry’s most advanced AI-driven CEM solution. Our patented AI-enabled playbooks and risk intelligence network ensure that organizations not only react faster but build long-term resilience.
Myth #10: AI in CEM is a future concept, not a reality
Reality: Everbridge High Velocity CEM™ already integrates AI for:
- AI-assisted BC/DR Planning – Automating plan creation and impact analysis.
- AI-powered risk intelligence – Scaling global risk monitoring and hyper-local threat detection.
- AI-authored alerts & templates – Reducing response time by automating message generation.
- AI-enabled insights & playbooks – Automating best-practice response strategies.
- AI-driven post-incident analysis – Improving future resilience planning with historical insights.
Conclusion
The myths surrounding AI in critical event management can cloud its immense potential. When deployed effectively, AI doesn’t just provide speed—it empowers organizations with accuracy, automation, and actionable intelligence to prepare for, respond to, and recover from critical events. Everbridge High Velocity CEM stands as the only full-lifecycle, AI-powered solution capable of addressing today’s complex risks with precision and scale.
