Business Continuity – Page 4

Secure the information you need with ISO22301 & ISO27001

Where you go and what you do, in an environment surrounded by systems managing other systems managed by people, security seems to be the word that keeps people awake at night. The main cause of this issue is the fundamental foundation of security awareness & training not being properly established and integrated into the organisations culture. So how can this be prevented? How can we build a sound resilience of security controls throughout the organisation? Yes that’s right, through ISO22301 & ISO27001 training and awareness. Read more

2015-07-29T11:52:29+10:00By Dri-ANZ|Business Continuity, Certification, Disaster Recovery, DRI International, Training|

Is Your Business Continuity Knowledge Leaking Away?

Good training and experience in business continuity can convert data, information and theory into something more valuable for an organisation – business continuity knowledge. The difference is that knowledge is practical, applicable and relevant to the organisation that has it. People who know what to do to keep a business ticking don’t have to scurry off to dig into textbooks. They know what to do because they have already built a model in their minds of how their organisation works and how to leverage business continuity resources appropriately. That’s a big advantage, but how permanent is it? Read more

2015-07-22T10:13:24+10:00By Dri-ANZ|Business Continuity|

Is It Business Continuity or Risk Management?

What’s in a name? Depending on the person offering the definitions, business continuity and risk management are sometimes considered as different functions, or subsets of each other, or simply the same. For example, the prevention, preparedness, response and recovery approach to risk management or PPRR is presented as risk management. However, when all the steps are accomplished and the results put together, you end up with a business continuity plan. Indeed, risk identification and business impact analysis are two classic steps in preparing overall business continuity. But what then of the opposite idea that business continuity is a subset of risk management? Read more

2015-06-02T11:33:16+10:00By Dri-ANZ|Business Continuity|

You Can Outsource Your Supply Chain, but Can You Outsource Your Risk?

Supply chains are where the smart money is when it comes to building competitive advantage. Building a ‘machine’ that blends production, logistics, sales and service for the best in customer satisfaction and enterprise profitability is the way to get ahead. Great supply chains are hard to copy, unlike pricing strategies or even technology. However, great supply chains are sometimes hard to build as well. For reasons of cost reduction or access to resources and know-how that they don’t have in-house, many companies outsource part or even all of their supply chain activity. The risk however often stays within the companies – and it’s been getting bigger and bigger. Read more

2015-04-20T11:42:24+10:00By Dri-ANZ|Business Continuity|

Threats and Horizon Scanning with a Bit of Darwin and Cybernetics

What gives business continuity managers sleepless nights? Snowstorms, pandemics, hurricanes and industrial action have all topped the list at one time or another. At the moment, cyber-attacks are the hot item. According to at least one recent report, hackers are considered number one out of the threats potentially affecting enterprises and organisations today. Who will survive? Darwin said that it would be the fittest. He meant those entities best adapted to their environment, and not necessarily the strongest, the fastest or even the smartest. Do Darwin’s ideas translate from the real into the virtual world, and what does it mean for threats and horizon scanning? Read more

2015-04-20T10:01:55+10:00By Dri-ANZ|Business Continuity|

What is the Biggest Enemy of Business Continuity?

A question like this might draw any number of answers. Board room resistance, hurricanes, cost, silo management, and hard disk crashes are just a few. Senior executives that refuse to spend time or money that they consider necessary for other priorities, howling gales with floods, and smoking servers are all highly imaginable enemies of business continuity. Those thinking a little more laterally might suggest unseen or unseeable enemies, such as apathy. If nobody cares about business continuity, it will never happen. But then again, most people want their business to continue, if only for reasons of job security. Here is another candidate that might well trump all the rest. Read more

2015-04-02T11:28:16+11:00By Dri-ANZ|Business Continuity|

How Do You Measure Business Continuity (Other than by Failure)?

Measuring the effectiveness of business continuity planning and management poses a conceptual problem. If business continuity is all about keeping operations going in adverse circumstances, how do you measure your ‘goodness of keeping operations going’? IT disaster recovery is by comparison an easier case to deal with, thanks to its recovery time and maximum data loss objectives (RTO and RPO). But business continuity is more about ‘always on’. Anything else less than 100% implies failure. What kind of a handle can we get on other business continuity metrics and what use are they? Read more

2015-04-02T11:23:25+11:00By Dri-ANZ|Business Continuity|

Does Big Data Help or Hinder Business Continuity?

Is your organisation using Big Data? If it is, business continuity questions will not be far behind. The first one is, naturally enough, on the business continuity of Big Data. The more Big Data is a strategic element in your organisation’s operations, the more important it is to guarantee its availability. If Big Data stores and systems are not adequately protected, a company could suffer interruptions to business activities and the reputational damage stemming from them. The second question is whether Big Data could help you to improve business continuity. It’s rather like question one, but in the opposite direction. How can you start to tackle both questions? Read more

2015-03-10T10:21:05+11:00By Dri-ANZ|Business Continuity|

Digital Continuity – Part of the Business Continuity Empire or Not?

Every so often a new field of professional activity is created. Ten years ago app developers, data miners and educational admissions consultants didn’t exist – not by name, anyway. However, the new is sometimes in fact the rehashed or simply renamed. Marketing people know the power of sticking a “new” label on a product, whatever the real degree of innovation. What then is the situation with digital continuity, which is about ensuring that digital information remains complete, available and usable? Is it new or just a bit more organisational marketing? Should it be part of the business continuity remit or is it better positioned as a separate responsibility? Read more

2015-02-23T12:43:02+11:00By Dri-ANZ|Business Continuity|

Five Profiles to Ponder When You Start Testing Your Business Continuity

Good business continuity planning may be half the battle. But if you haven’t tested to check your plan works, then don’t expect to win. The example of organisations that did data backups, failed to test and found afterwards their files were unrecoverable proves the point. But how should you test your BCP? Approaches from other areas may have some useful pointers. Good software testing for instance is often a matter of mixing and matching human tester personalities. Here’s a tester profile model adapted for testing your BC plan and preparations. Read more

2015-02-19T11:12:50+11:00By Dri-ANZ|Business Continuity|