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New plan for London's Pandemic Planning

As organisations planning falters...

The Government Office for London's Resilience Team has just released the updated plan to detailing its plans to address the threat of Pandemic. This update follows enhanced guidance from the Department of Health and the Cabinet Office.

In recent years an increasing chunk of companies’ corporate security or business continuity budget has been spent on maintaining back-up sites where data can be stored or from which the business could be run in an emergency.

However, security consultants point out that risk management begins at home with measures to safeguard company headquarters, branches, factories and greenfield sites.

For new buildings, once the nature of the risks to the business has been assessed, this means careful planning of the layout and configuration of the site or office and security professionals should be part of the process.

Active analysis can be subdivided into three categories of possible threats/occurrences that could befall an organization. Dr. Ian Mitroff refers to the three categories as Natural Accidents, Normal Accidents and Abnormal Accidents. I have renamed them and to differentiate the three aspects of each. That is, the threat, the actual occurrence and the consequence of the occurrence.

At the time of this writing H5N1, known as Avian Flu, is spreading throughout Asia with one of the highest mortality rates of any flu virus of the previous century. Even the Influenza (Spanish Flu) of 1918 did not have as high a morbidity and mortality rate as H5N1 (Avian Flu). We are seeing almost daily some revelation from the World Health Organization (WHO) or Centers for Disease Control (CDC) or the popular media.

The terrorist attacks of September 11th should have been a wake call for the business community in Britain and across the world. However, nearly four years on, national surveys show nearly 49% of all UK businesses lack plans to keep the wheels turning if the unthinkable happens. Astonishingly, that number has only improved by 5% since the 9/11 attacks. Where there are plans – mostly among the larger and more regulated businesses – one fifth have never been tested.

Why has business been so slow to get its act together?

We watched as the 9/11 attacks unfurled, we watched the Madrid Bombings, we watched, as there were targeted attacks on business overseas. But an attitude of “it could never happen to us” permeated the wider business community.

While the web has reduced from days to minutes the time in which a corporate reputation can be attacked on a global scale, companies trying to protect their brands must also face the fact that the public remains cynical about the motives of organisations in both state and private sectors.

The most obvious commercial victim of bird flu - imagined or real - is the multi-million pound poultry industry, which includes egg producers and broiler breeders, as well as those bringing the poultry to market; ranging from supermarkets to restaurants.

For the moment, this sector's most immediate concern is that talk of a possible pandemic will spook consumers.

Hundreds of actors found themselves hired for an unusual performance earlier this month - faking illness. The actors, part of the USA's largest ever terrorism drill, played people suffering from the effects of a biological agent.

The issue of security continues to be a major industry topic and understandably, especially as this is is one area of BCM that tends to have the highest profile . Many of the issues are closely linked to the increasing complexity and interoperability requirements of applications across a wide variety of Platforms. These problems are also compounded by the generally poor practices of many IT departments and internal users who continue to be a very weak link in the security chain.

Torrential rain and hail brought flash floods to Leeds on Tuesday - sparking hundreds of calls to the fire brigade.

Water and Flood damage management

Water damage is often believed to be a static effect of primary damage where the visual effects of contact and adsorption are a measure of damage. The reality is that water damage is dynamic, continuingly expanding it’s effects and is capable of developing far reaching secondary damage in minutes or days after the initial effects.

Bio amplification, mould, corrosion, swelling and distortion are typical effects of uncontrolled water escape or flooding. These effects can result in health risks, structural and contents damage and possible devaluation of property.

Confronting the Conundrums of Business Continuity by Jon William Toigo

In government and business, there continues to be more discussion than doing in the realm of disaster recovery and business continuity. One hears a lot of talk about "10/12" - the next 9/11 - which everyone from the familiar crepe hangers and doomsayers to the most heads-in-the-clouds pollyannas agrees is more or less inevitable.

Add to that the weather-related disaster potentials that NASA weather models predict will worsen this year, the well-documented vulnerabilities of aging power and telecommunications infrastructures, and ongoing problems in information technology that range from poor interoperability standards to improved malware and hacking techniques, and you have a confluence of threats that could best be described as the Perfect Storm.