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5 steps to avoid Airport misery

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Submitted Article
 
For some time now question marks have been placed against airports and their Business Continuity and resilience capability. In the past year alone we have seen at close hand the global chaos caused by the volcanic ash cloud, while more recently we witnessed some of Europe’s leading airports struggle to maintain operational readiness during periods of heavy snowfall.
 
If we go back a little further there are other striking examples, all of which add to the pervading view that airports cannot cope effectively when placed under duress and that their Business Continuity need to be improved.
 

Maintaining continual improvement momentum in BCM

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Does the phrase continual improvement turn you cold?
 
Do you feel under pressure to keep reinventing the Business Continuity Management System (BCMS) wheel?
 
What is continual improvement?
 
If you think that you have to find new ways to improve your Business Continuity system every day for the rest of your life, relax. Continual improvement is a state of mind as much as identifying tangible improvements.
 
Take a look at what is meant by the words continual and improvement. 
 

Murphy's Law ... Defensive design little light reading

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Something to think about for all Business Continuity professionals ...
 
Murphys Law
 
Murphy's law (distinct from, and often confused with Finagle's law or Sod's law) is a popular adage in Western culture, which broadly states that things will go wrong in any given situation in which error is possible. "If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way."
 
It is most commonly formulated as "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong" and is something we have become all too familiar with in the Business Continuity Field!
 
Technically speaking, this latter definition is incorrect, given that it refers more accurately to the law of pessimism, Finagle's Law.
 

Ensuring infrastructure resilience in an online world

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Contributed article
 
The Internet is a wonderful tool when it works, but we are increasingly at a loss when it encounters a problem. Steve Durbin, Global VP at Information Security Forum (ISF), looks at what organisations should be doing to minimise the risks and boost their Business Continuity , as a growing proportion of commercial transactions are performed online.
 

Implement an Integrated Approach to BCM

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submitted by Graeme Bryce, CEO, Factonomy
 
Conventional approaches to Business Continuity Management (BCM) system adoption typically involve choosing from a range of cumbersome and expensive software packages which require a company to change the way it runs its business to fit in with the BCM solution being implemented.
 

Flooding - the case to better protect your facilities

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Submitted by Russell Greig-Bartram, MD Disasternet Ltd
 
A case to better protect your facility
 
It is a fact that a better risk managed facility leads to significantly reduced volatility of earnings for an enterprise, and yet we continue to see little evidence of organisations implementing plans and Business Continuity measures to recover the temporary loss of their facility following an incident.
 

WHAT NOW FOR BUSINESS CONTINUITY UNDER A COALITION GOVERNMENT?

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For the past few years one of the key underlying drivers helping to develop Business Continuity has been the Public Sector. The introduction of the Civil Contingencies Act five years ago included clear responsibilities on many different types of government agencies as well as what can be termed as private sector utilities. In addition to the business continuity requirements on these organisations, there was a further "duty" to promote business continuity more broadly within the business community.

Risk and Executive Management awareness

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Macroawareness of risk – is this really a reasonable expectation of executive leadership and the board?
By Joe Long, Solomon Joseph Consulting
 
Although it can be argued that there is nothing new under the sun, today’s business climate mirrors nothing like we have seen in the past. Over the last decade, the speed of the news headlines is only rivaled by society’s appetite for more and more news. From daily blogs to twitter to the myriad of news channels covering every business nuance worldwide, top executives for large organizations are expected, if not required, to stay on top of everything that has the potential to affect their business. Therefore, in spite of the very real threats of terrorism, pandemic, global warming, global economic meltdown, supplier bankruptcy, cyber attacks, etc.; the single biggest threat to directors and officers right now is the inability to sustain ‘Macroawareness’.
 
 

White Paper: Building a Security and Risk Strategy for emerging technologies

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High Performers & Foundational Controls: Building a strategy for Security and Risk Management 

 

This Enterprise Management Associates White Paper discusses building a strategy security risk management.

 

With all the attention given to the increasing sophistication of threats, and the security implications of technology trends such as virtualisation and cloud computing, our enterprises ready for tomorrow's security risks? These are the questions being addressed in this white paper.

 

The White Paper concludes that for many organisations the answer is no!

12 months on... Thoughts on a pandemic

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As I write this, it is exactly one year since the first reported case of H1N1 (swine flu) arising from last year’s pandemic. It seems natural therefore to take a moment and consider what happened, how we responded, what was learned and perhaps even suggest a way forward.
 
The Continuity Forum has been actively researching and assessing the potential for major disruption from a pandemic type event for many years; our interest started on reviewing what happened around the SARS outbreak which impacted in the Far East and Canada. 

CMI report charts an interesting year for the BCM profession

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Disruption and resilience, 2010 from the CMI

 

Over the course of the past 10 years the annual Business Continuity study by the Chartered Management institute has plotted the progress and expansion of the profession. 2010 is no exception.  Over the past 12 months the country has faced widespread disruption through extreme weather events, recession and the potential posed by the swine flu pandemic ... it has been a year to challenge most working in the field.

 

Data Recovery ... value, options and action

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When you think about your disaster recovery plan, does your tape backup system come to mind? Does the mere mention of disaster recovery make you a bit nervous? If so, you're not alone.

Many businesses risk grave losses due to failures and disasters yet continue to depend on their limited options provided tape backups to help them recover successfully should a major outage occur.

Viewpoint: are businesses well enough placed to deal with flu pandemic?

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Trevor Elswood, BSI group managing director


Although the symptoms of the H1N1 virus (swine flu) are currently similar to a normal bout of winter flu, the World Health Organisation has designated the current alert level for the virus as Phase 6, indicating widespread human infection.  So, what are companies doing to ensure business continuity?

 

BC Management in an IT security landscape

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A plethora of articles have explored the challenges of managing systems in a market downturn. The one common message is that information security professionals have to do more with less - to balance the rise in vulnerabilities and threat vectors with a fall in budget. Hence the increasing requirement to work smarter and develop holistic, sustainable approaches to information security management.

Bio threats - politics or preparation. A changing landscape

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Preparing or Politics?

Proper preparation can prevent poor performance

Can the politics and the science surrounding Bio Threats ever be separated and progress made ? This is the important question that persisted, following the SDA Bio-preparedness debate held at the Solvay in Brussels.
 
A range of thoughtful, serious experts came together and shared their views on the level of the threats faced, and the measures in place and being planned to help combat any Bio-Threat events. 
 
The consensus of opinion from the report contributors and conference speakers made it crystal clear that Biological Threats were indeed very real from natural and also manmade sources. Although there was some divergence of opinion on the likely risks of a biological attack, it was interesting to note that such differences were focused more on the impact and type of attack, rather than its inherent probability.
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