Business Continuity Testing

Business Continuity Benchmarking for All but Ostriches

Ostriches are known for burying their heads in the sand, when danger approaches. Shut out the signs and the stimuli, and you shut out the danger, or so ostrich logic goes. Business continuity ostriches take a similar approach. The signs they fear are the comparisons between their BC planning and management, and those of other organisations. In part one of this blog post, we looked at ways of measuring business continuity performance internally. Now in part two, it’s time to look at how external measures might reveal some truths that are hard to swallow, but that must be heeded. Paradoxically, that shouldn’t pose too much of a problem for ostriches, known for their propensity to swallow all manner of objects… Read more

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