Category: Business Continuity

Perhaps I’m just a curmudgeon (a crusty, ill-tempered old man), but it irks me when someone uses the term “Business Continuity” exclusively to refer to IT planning.  Perhaps I’ve been in this industry too long.  I remember when IT planning was referred to as “Disaster Recovery”, and only business operations used the term “Business Continuity”.  […]

An excellent, recent article in Information Week online, entitled “5 Reasons Your Employees Don’t Care About Business Continuity” dealt with what I might categorize as ‘symptoms’ of non-participation. There are some fundamental problems in many organizations (and in their Business Continuity Management programs) that discourage participation – and often assure its failure. Those are the […]

“Business Continuity Planning: Is it an Art or a Science?” That discussion rages on, with as much intensity as the chicken-or-the-egg controversy.  But there is no doubt when it comes to Incident Management – there must be an underlying science for the response to be predictable and effective. One key element of that science is […]

Those of us who spend our business lives immersed in the Business Continuity industry swim through a sea of acronyms.  Meanwhile, we are constantly seeking the support and cooperation of colleagues who are often confused by those same acronyms. We can make understanding easier simply by using real terms instead of acronyms.  But unless we […]

During an incident there is constant need or desire for information from many stakeholders: Senior Management wants to know what is impacted, what the response is, what the expected outcome is and when operations will be back to ‘normal’. Line managers who are indirectly impacted want to know when they can get back to business-as-usual. […]

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plans often rely on assumptions (read more about them here).  Some Business Continuity plans are very effective response plans but assume that, during an incident, it will be the only plan invoked.  That’s a highly blinkered view. Lessons learned from disaster events such as Super storm Sandy prove that when […]