Category: Business Continuity

Will your Business Continuity Plan Serve Your Recovery Horizon?

Assumptions can be the downfall of even the best Business Continuity Plan (we’ve addressed that issue in an early blog).  Sometimes it’s not the overt assumptions we make (“All critical IT systems will be available within 4 hours of the disruption.“) but the ones we don’t realize we’ve made that may jeopardize our…

The Myth of the RTO

This is the 1st in a series of articles examining the “myths” of today’s Business Continuity Management industry.  In a standard, methodology-driven BCM program, much of the industry follows the RA-BIA-Strategy-Plan Development cookie-cutter path, assuming that of all of these will lead to a viable and sustainable Business Continuity Planning…

Automating NIMS ICS for Efficient Incident Response

When a disruptive incident impacts critical national or regional infrastructure, or when public safety is at stake, multiple emergency agencies are often involved in the response. Those responders could be from federal or state agencies as well as local teams of EMT’s, police, firefighters and other volunteers.  Emergency response organizations…

I Get My Files Back When? – Another BC/DR Conflict

What would you do if the files you rely on every day were unavailable? Most of us become accustomed to storing much of the data we use – spreadsheets, forms, slide packs, photos and other documents – on ‘shared files’.  Whether it’s on a corporate “S: drive” or a SharePoint…

Access Credentials at your Alternate Workspace

An ‘alternate workspace’ (either at your own locations, or contracted through a 3rd party provider) can be a vital component of a viable Business Continuity strategy; but only if the strategy works as intended. An earlier article discussed Alternate Site Logistics – transportation, access and accommodations.  But you’ll also need…

Original Documents – Business Continuity Risk or Liability?

Even in today’s wired world, many organizations require access to original documents to deliver goods or services.  If yours is one of them, how you maintain continuity of access to those documents should be part of your Business Continuity Planning. Even though we like to think we live in a…

How can we Harness Situational Intelligence?

There are many products and services on the market today designed to help notify the right people with (hopefully) the right messages in the event of disruption of day-to-day operations. Yet we in Business Continuity (and Emergency Management, Crisis Management and ITDR) spend little time, money or effort streamlining how…

Who’s on First? Understanding Recovery Priorities: Part 2

(NOTE: This is second part of the 6th in a series of articles discussing the future of Business Continuity Management.  The series starts here.) Business Process Prioritization As some point (presumably when determining BCM Objectives) the underlying goals of BCM must be made clear.  Objectives become the guideposts for determining…

Responders are Human – With Limits

Business Continuity Planning is often theoretical.  After all, we can’t really know what we’ll need until a disruption occurs (and by then, it’s too late for planning!).  As a result, we have little choice but to make our best guess as to what we’ll need when something hits the proverbial…

Don’t Plan for Snow – Plan for Impacted Assets

The harshness and repeated ferocity of the winter of 2015 (especially in the New England states) sent many businesses scrambling to update their Business Continuity Plans.  The earlier Ebola crisis in West Africa set off the same kind of frenzy.  As a wise Business Continuity Management (BCM) guru once said…