Business Continuity – Page 3

Why Disaster Recovery in Your Pocket is Logical and Natural

Listen to some marketing gurus and you’ll hear that human beings were never meant to sit at desks. Mobility is built into people, they claim. In that case, as technology is driving today’s businesses, it needs to move around with and adapt to people (and not vice versa). The mobile user experience should be the priority, and neither network connection nor smaller screen should interfere with productivity and effectiveness. That raises some interesting questions about the disaster recovery of such a mobile-oriented set-up. Read more

2016-02-01T11:15:05+11:00By Dri-ANZ|Disaster Recovery|

Hiring in DR and BC from the Start

If your organization has asked you to hire people to plan and manage its disaster recovery and business continuity, how should you set about it? The natural reaction of many hiring managers is to look for relevant skills and experience. However, this may not be the best approach. What you really want to know is if a candidate has a burning desire to help your organization to recover from IT disaster and continue operating even when the going gets tough. Even a previous title like “Business Continuity Manager” does not necessarily guarantee the passion for the job that you want to see in an applicant. You need another approach. Read more

2015-11-10T16:30:34+11:00By Dri-ANZ|Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery|

“Selling” Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery to Your Suppliers

How many enterprises or organisations produce everything they need in order to do business? The answer today is very few, if any. Practically all companies rely on third party suppliers, somewhere, somehow. With this reliance comes risk, and the question of business continuity: what happens to our business if supplier X ceases to supply us? Many enterprises tackle the problem by using multiple suppliers, possibly in multiple locations, for the same supplies. However, in the interests of efficiency and lower overheads, there is also a case to be made for helping a supplier to become more resilient by “selling” its good practices in business continuity and disaster recovery. Read more

2015-11-03T09:44:41+11:00By Dri-ANZ|Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery|

Your Business Continuity as Your Customers See It

It’s not always easy to look at things from somebody else’s point of view. Sales and marketing people have to do so if they want to build products that customers want and get the customer’s order. Successful supply chains rely on each link meeting the requirements of the next link, meaning the next customer, right up to the end-customer again. Similarly, business continuity has its internal customers. BC needs to be “sold” to departments to get them actively involved in making sure they can keep on working even in adverse conditions. Now external business customers also want to know what BC precautions their suppliers are taking. It may not be long before consumers do too. Read more

2015-09-29T15:13:17+10:00By Dri-ANZ|Business Continuity|

Reversing the Vicious Spiral of Poor Compliance

A major banking organisation was recently in the news for its failure to prevent money laundering and criminal activity. A statement from prosecutors indicated that the bank’s procedures had deficiencies to such a level that making them public would incite further serious crime. While this example comes from the financial sector, it applies to enterprise security and business continuity in general. When cracks start to form, a natural reaction is try to paper over them instead of admitting that the structure itself is faulty and rebuilding it appropriately. But what happens if the cracks keep getting bigger? Read more

2015-09-22T09:18:35+10:00By Dri-ANZ|Business Continuity|

Will a ‘Non-Stop’ Attitude Break Your Organisation?

More and more, the expectation is that enterprises will provide services at any time. Internet banking and e-commerce are prime examples. Customers can hop onto the web at three in the morning if they choose, and check their accounts, transfer money or buy almost anything they want. However, that means a ‘non-stop’ infrastructure needs to be in place for the provider to offer 24-hour, round the clock service. This is where dangerous confusion can creep in. It’s confusion that clear business continuity thinking needs to eradicate, if interruptions and accidents are to be avoided. Read more

2015-08-06T09:47:54+10:00By Dri-ANZ|DRI International|

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|

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|