Final answer:
The system characteristic allowing continued operation despite component failures is redundancy, often seen in setups like RAID configurations in servers.
Step-by-step explanation:
The characteristic that is associated with a system that "Can continue to function even in the event of individual component failures" is redundancy.
A redundant system includes additional components, systems, or subsystems that are not necessarily required for normal operation, but ensure continuous functionality when failure occurs. For example, in a computer server setup, redundancy might be implemented with multiple hard drives set up in a RAID configuration, so if one drive fails, the system can still operate using the other drives.