Pandemics are good material for Hollywood disaster films. They also feature in various disaster recovery planning documents issued by governments as advice, or by private sector organisations as disaster recovery plans. In true Hollywood style, projected pandemics are often almost too big to be believable. That makes them great subjects of conversation at the coffee machine, while public health organisations spend considerable amounts of time and money estimating impacts and stockpiling remedies. What is less obvious is whether we’ve recognised that the pandemics with overall bigger impacts may not be the disaster-movie variety at all.
Archive for the ‘Business Resilience’ Category
Pandemics and Business Continuity Plans
Monday, February 6th, 2012Business Continuity After Customer Collapse
Friday, November 4th, 2011Disaster recovery and business continuity are often thought of in terms of floods, fires, explosions and similar physical events. What may be less obvious to BC planners but just as critical to the survival of an organisation are the non-physical events, such as the loss of a major customer or a major change in a company’s stakeholders. The collapse of the global financial services firm Lehman Brothers was a case in point. At the same time, the company was a major customer of the Euroclear Bank and a major stakeholder of the then fifth largest hedge fund in the US, D. E. Shaw & Co. Luckily Euroclear had already planned for the event. (more…)
Employee and Personal Impacts of a Disaster
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011Although recovering servers and IT applications is an important part of disaster recovery and business continuity planning, it’s also important to take into account the impact on employees of a disaster. A company’s systems may be vital if employees are to be able to work, but employees are also how a company communicates and continues to do business with its customers and suppliers.
Cloud Computing: Risky Business Round Table
Monday, March 28th, 2011OpsCentre will be hosting a Round Table on the 28th of April at the Vibe Hotel in Sydney; to register click here.
We will be discussing the risks associated with cloud computing with industry professionals.
To get you warmed up for the discussion have a look at this very informative clip posted by Macquarie Telecom discussing Cloud computing and the risks associated with off-site data storage.
Click here to watch the Macquarie Telecom Clip.
CIOs warned to prioritise governance and business continuity
Thursday, March 24th, 2011Recent natural disasters have spurred warnings to forgo a reactive approach to governance.
In this Computerworld article, HopgoodGanim’s IT lawyers are reminded of the importance of prioritising ICT governance and business continuity to minimise risk to the business, in the wake of the recent natural disasters plaguing the nation and indeed the world.
Japan Earthquake – Before and After
Monday, March 21st, 2011Some amazing photo’s of the Japan Earthquake have just released by ABC.
Slide your mouse left and right over the images to reveal the before and after scenes. Click here
OpsCentre Round Table Event – Cloud Computing: Risky Business?
Thursday, March 17th, 2011OpsCentre is hosting another Round Table event at the Vibe Hotel in Sydney on 28th April 2011 to discuss Cloud Computing Risks.
Details have been updated on OpsCentre’s Events page and there is a link through to more information and registration.
Roundtable Event – Building Resilence in your organisation – Is it really possible?
Monday, November 29th, 2010OpsCentre is hosting a roundtable event on the 7th of December, 2010.
With today’s ever changing environment; with new technologies, environmental factors and new generation risks pose increasing threats to managers in an ever changing landscape of uncertainties. The question we pose is does resilience really exist within an organisation, and how can it be achieved
The discussion is relevant to Chief Executives, Chief Financial Officers, Managing Directors, Business Continuity Managers, Risk and Compliance Managers, and all senior executives looking to understand and identify “Building Resilience within an Organisation and whether it is actually possible” during 2010/11
More information and register to attend here
Embedding Business Continuity Management into your organisation’s culture
Thursday, November 25th, 2010Your business continuity and IT disaster recovery plans are living documents that need to continually evolve otherwise they will stagnate. If you maintain and exercise your plan it will evolve along with your organisation, helping you to be prepared should a business interruption strike.
Here are OpsCentre’s top 5 tips on how to keep the Business Continuity Plan alive in your organisation.
- Business Continuity needs a senior sponsor that has the authority and influence to establish the priority of BCP for the organisation. Get BCP on the agenda for Road Shows and Strategic Planning sessions that the Executive presents.
- Ensure that impacts upon Business Continuity Strategy are considered when assessing the business case for all new projects. Not just IT projects but business ones as well such as implementing new products, services or business locations. Ensure that any changes required to the business continuity strategy, for example extra seats at a recovery site, are included when you cost out the new project. You can also include reviewing the BIA and updating the recovery procedures for the affected business units as activities in the project. Update your business case templates and change request templates to prompt for these considerations up front.
- Include a BCP awareness package in the induction training for all new staff.
- Include business continuity ‘roles’ in position descriptions, workplans and KPI’s.
- Exercise and Test your plan every year at a minimum. Testing is not a pass or fail exercise, it helps to refine your plan and provides an excellent opportunity for staff to gain familiarity with their business continuity roles and the continuity strategies. It doesn’t have to be boring, business continuity can be an interesting, fun, team building event.
OpsCentre Round Table Event – Operational Risk – the convergence of People, Processes & Technology
Thursday, July 1st, 2010Operational Risk emerges from various sources; sometimes lying undetected for years, or more often, unexpectedly, catching executives off-guard. Join us for this roundtable discussion to share your ideas and find out how your peers mitigate operational risk and ensure protection of their organisation’.
The discussion is relevant to Chief Executives, Chief Financial Officers, Managing Directors, Business Continuity Managers, Risk and Compliance Managers, and all senior executives looking to assess and mitigate risks during 2010/11.
Rod Crowder, Managing Director of OpsCentre, will facilitate an open and unbiased discussion between participants; providing an opportunity to comment and discuss individual perspectives and share related issues and experiences with each other. He will outline a number of action areas where senior executives can gain rapid traction on this important challenge.
Operational Risk is one of many categories of risk managed by all organisations, others include; strategic, compliance, reporting, market, credit, legal, political and insurance risks. Whilst some types relate to generation of strategic advantage or profitability, operational risk is inherent to the imperfections or errors of its people, processes and technology assets. Organisations must assess the likelihood and impact to generate an overall rating, against which mitigation strategies can be implemented or accept a level of ‘residual risk’.
Our round table discussion topics include:
What are the major categories of operational risk?
How are organisations assessing qualitative and quantitative operational risks?
How does ‘risk appetite and tolerance’ vary across different organisations?
What strategies, methods and tools are organisations using for risk mitigation?
What operational risk management standards or ‘good practice guides’ are relevant?
What experiences do people have in responding to incidents?
We look forward to sharing your views and perspectives at our Roundtable.
When?
Thursday July 08, 2010, 4:00PM to 6:00PM
Where?
OpsCentre - Level 18, 323 Castlereagh Street, Sydney 2000 Australia
Or
Online: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/join/672734064
Audio: +612 6108 4655, Access Code: 672-734-064
Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting
Meeting ID: 672-734-064
Contact Rod Crowder ASAP to register your attendance.
About your Facilitator
Rod Crowder is Managing Director of OpsCentre, a boutique provider of risk, business continuity and disaster recovery consulting, software and training solutions. He has worked in the Management Consulting sector for 17 years in a variety of management, training, facilitation, project management and consulting roles.
Rod has project managed and consulted on projects for organisations including Telstra, Lend Lease, Nestle, Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu Australia, DCA Group, Thomson Legal and Regulatory, Omnilab Media Group, Ambience Entertainment, Amity Group, Amnesty International, Integral Energy, Coates Hire, Westlink M7, Hills M2 Motorway, Franklins Foods and several Federal and NSW Government Agencies, and local councils.
He has undertaken extensive overseas consulting assignments in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand, USA and Europe. He holds a Higher National Diploma in Computer Studies from Brighton University in the UK.
Business Continuity – Is your business ‘Recovery Ready’?
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010Do you know the answers to these questions for your organisation?
1. How would we continue to function in an extended building evacuation such as a power outage or flood in the basement?
2. Who are our most critical customers and how would we contact them?
3. What is our current IT Disaster Recovery capability? How long would it take to restore our most critical systems, applications and data?
4. Do we outsource critical business functions to third party organisations services? What if they were to fail.
5. Do our staff know how to get out of our building safely, where to go, and how do we account for them?
6. In the event of a disaster, would we need to implement manual workarounds to cater for reduced staff numbers, loss of IT systems, or denial of access to our building?
OpsCentre recommends undertaking a Readiness Assessment to identify where you are exposed and the possible impacts. If you would like assistance with evaluating the health of your business continuity program, we would be happy to assist. Don’t forget we are offering a complimentary initial consultation from which you will receive an ‘actionable’ health check report.
Click here for more information about the OpsCentre complimentary consultation.
Business Resilience and Agility
Friday, February 19th, 2010We are increasingly hearing about the word resilience. When speaking scientifically it refers the physical property of a material to ‘bounce back’ to its original position after deformation that does not broaden elastic limitations.
Irregular change is nothing new to modern enterprises: witness the colossal changes in technology and economies as well as social and environmental developments. We are living in a world which is constantly evolving, changing and expanding. Enterprises need to respond by bolstering their suppleness and agility. We are constantly witnessing modification as these groups create ‘virtual enterprises’ in which they share key process with other businesses, they construct infrastructures which support expansion, and create environments that sustain varied lifestyles.
Agility is becoming increasingly important as is resilience. We witnessed large spread change on September the 11th as the world was catapulted into a ‘new normal’, one of indecision and unrest. Resilient organizations bounced back within a short period whilst non- resilient struggled to re-establish, and rebuild.
Agility is an offensive strategy while resilience is defensive and refers to a means of recovery from unanticipated events. Working in a variety of different industries I believe that resilient organizations are ones which have adopted it as an attitude. It is part of their corporate culture and the product of the persona of individuals in an organization. One cannot build a durable organization on the shoulders of those who don’t embrace it. If a leader has it as a character trait then followers will more than likely follow suit as they tend to adopt similar characteristics.
Resilience begins at home and has to be sustained over time.
Have you though about the vulnerabilities and areas of weakness in your own business and how to improve your level of operational resilience to address them?