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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.

2005 will be remembered for the power of nature and its ability to destroy what man has made. The Indian Ocean tsunami, hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the earthquake in Kashmir have provided demonstrations of how fragile communities are when faced by such disasters.

While much corporate attention has, over the past several years, been lavished on security - with everything from guards, access control cards and electronic intrusion detection systems now the norm - managing a crisis in the workplace is sometimes neglected.

Extortionists attack business through DoS 

It has become common practise for extortionists to target net firms and threaten to cripple their websites with deluges of data unless they pay a ransom. Not all the e-criminals are able to follow through on their threats but when the Nochex site went down at 8pm it was time to sit up and take notice.

"We get quite a few, maybe once a month so we don't always take it too seriously," he said.

In this instance though Mr Malik did contact his service provider Pipex. "They told us we were being flooded by a zombie attack," he said.

ARCHIVE Material

The planning for business continuity and disaster recovery post CBR chemical biological radiological is often ignored or even potentially worse, incorrectly assessed. This assessment can be assimilated as that of a hazard assessment when the risk manager doesn’t know of combined or symbiotic effects. Post CBR planning may be difficult to assess due to limited knowledge, experience or facts but various information is available on which to assert assumptions.

Outsourcing managing the relationship honestly 

'Force majeure' is written into many contracts, but it is a mistake to treat it as a boilerplate clause. It is vital that definition and terms are spelt out clearly.

Like so many things left to chance, the modest clause of "force majeure" is written into the terms of many IT outsourcing, credit card, lease, insurance and financial contracts, and could be a disaster just waiting to happen.

So what is force majeure, and why is it sometimes overlooked for serious consideration when spelling it out could benefit both the supplier and the customer?

Geary Stitch discusses Active Analysis and Business Continuity 

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.

Executive Summary

In September 2000, British farmers and truck drivers launched a dramatic campaign of direct action to protest a fuel duty. Their campaign followed a similar one by farmers, truckers, and fishermen in France, which had resulted in concessions from the French government.

The UK protesters blockaded fuel refineries and distribution depots, and, within days, created a fuel crisis that paralyzed CI sectors and brought the country to a virtual halt. The impact of the protest was much deeper than anticipated because it struck at a particularly vulnerable point of the UK economy -- the oil distribution network, which had been organized along just-in-time delivery principles. This, combined with anticipated shortages by fuel consumers and consequent panic buying, magnified the impact of the protests on practically all CI sectors in the UK.

October 31 2005

Businesses warned of cash flow problems, supply chain hold-ups and staff absences which would follow an outbreak with MANY businesses, including those operations depending on sensitive supply chains, finding they have little or no insurance cover against the effects of avian flu.

With the infection beginning to hit Europe, leading insurance broker and risk management consultant Aon has called on corporates to take action to protect their performance.

As part of the overall provision of UK civil protection Local Authorities, Emergency Services and parts of the NHS (Category 1 responders) in England and Wales are now required by law to have established effective business continuity management. They must ensure they can continue to perform their functions in the event of an emergency.

This relates to all the functions of a Category 1 responder, not just its civil protection functions. In order to help others in the event of an emergency, they first need to be able to keep their own crisis response capabilities going.

Reseach finds that UK organisations are ‘sitting ducks’ as they fail to plan for major disruptions

07 March 2005

UK organisations admit they are failing to protect key assets and the ability to function in the face of major disruptions, according to research published today by the Chartered Management Institute. The 2005 Business Continuity Management Survey uncovered alarming inactivity, with organisations ignoring threats to their business, neglecting the needs of their managers, and not communicating plans with employees.

The UK is not alone in facing in facing a new age in terrorist threat, the risks around the world are greater than ever before and it is our responsibility to directly address the real dangers posed Business and residential customers across a wide area of the North West of England suffered the complete loss of both voice and data capability, in most cases for over a week, and a cascade effect was seen with data hosting and call centres located within the affected area extending the effects across Britain and other countries.

Companies today face a rapidly shifting landscape when it comes to risk. The threat of a terrorist attack on an important location, ever more burdensome regulation and the trend towards moving operations to lower cost areas of the world are all shaping the risks that companies face.

 Supply Chain failures cause Serious Damage

Like a heart-attack victim felled by poor circulation, companies who suffer a sudden blockage in their flow of products to consumers face a long road to recovery, says Vinod Singhal, professor of operations management at Georgia Tech College of Management.

“Disruptions in the supply chain devastate corporate performance,” says Singhal, who recently conducted several related studies of supply-chain failure in collaboration with Kevin Hendricks, associate professor of operations management at the University of Western Ontario. Their research shows that disruptions do long-lasting damage to companies’ stock prices and profitability and need to be more thoroughly addressed by Business Continuity planners