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.
Posts Tagged ‘Risk Management’
Pandemics and Business Continuity Plans
Monday, February 6th, 2012Primary Metrics For Disaster Recovery And Business Continuity
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011Metrics are what you use to measure things. It sounds obvious. What’s not so obvious is why figure-driven metrics seem so often to be channelled off towards disaster recovery and IT in particular, whereas other high-level metrics end up with business continuity. Sure, there are the historical IT roots of disaster recovery to be considered compared to those of business continuity, but in theory we’ve evolved since then. Are we face to face with a phenomenon of, well, “metricism” – our term to express unjustified discrimination in the way metrics are used? (more…)
The Danger Of Disaster Recovery Overkill
Monday, December 12th, 2011In theory, disaster recovery like its counterpart business continuity needs to concentrate on what is critical in an organisation to keep it functioning correctly, and concentrate on planning for and managing those aspects. Experience plays a large part in understanding how far to go, and having broad knowledge gained by working in or with the various operations of a company can be invaluable. Otherwise plans can become too elaborate and too costly compared to the general level of business risk that applies to an organisation. Yet, how much disaster recovery is too much?
News feature: Risky business
Friday, April 8th, 2011Awareness is growing around the importance of risk management, and IT’s involvement in ensuring compliance. A special ARN report.
Risk management should be high on the list of priorities right now. If organisations and boards didn’t realise its importance previously, the natural disasters of Queensland, Victoria, Perth, Christchurch, Japan, and, most recently, Myanmar (it’s been a bad start to the year) should have reinforced it.
Then there’s the other, less physical disasters that can hit organisations. RSA security gets broken through, Anonymous effectively pulls Visa and MasterCard offline. Locally, Virgin runs into a PR disaster when its customers struggle with its systems.
OpsCentre has added an Events section to the website
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010OpsCentre has updated the website with a new section on upcoming events that may be of interest to you. This event page will highlight upcoming industry events relevant to Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery and Risk.
You can find the new Events page here… OPSCENTRE EVENTS
OpsCentre Roundtable Event – Managing Emerging and New Era Risks
Monday, October 11th, 2010In the 21st century, a number of New Era or Emerging risks are challenging our traditional risk management methodologies, tools and techniques. Risk professionals must keep up-to-date with them: assessing, mitigating and managing these risks, each and every day.
What is a New Era, or Emerging, Risk? Categories include Economic, Environmental, Geopolitical, Societal and Technological. Examples include Demographic shift, Climate changes, Social Networking, Terrorism, Pandemics and Critical information infrastructure, to name just a few.
Join us for this roundtable discussion to share your ideas and find out how your peers assess and manage new era risks and ensure protection of their organisation’.
OpsCentre extends an invitation to the roundtable event to Chief Executives, Chief Financial Officers, Managing Directors, Business Continuity Managers, Risk and Compliance Managers, and all senior executives looking to understand and identify “Emerging 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.
Our round table discussion topics include:
What are the major categories of Emerging Risk?
Do existing Risk Management practices cater for these types of risk?
What emerging risks will your organisation face next?
How are organisations assessing qualitative and quantitative Emerging risks?
What risk response strategies need to be implemented?
Is there a need for collaboration with an external party to deal with emerging Risks?
What methods are there of effectively using indicators to monitor Emerging risks?
We look forward to sharing your views and perspectives at our Roundtable event.
When:
Thursday October 21, 2010
from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM EST
Where:
Vibe Hotel Sydney
111 Goulburn St
Sydney 2000
Register Now
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.
OpsCentre’s Risk Management Video on You Tube
Thursday, April 29th, 2010OpsCentre has uploaded a video about Risk Management to our You Tube Channel…
Compliance Management
Saturday, March 6th, 2010Compliance is an outcome of an organization meeting its obligations. Policies and procedures to achieve compliance must be integrated into all aspects of how the organization operates. Compliance should not be seen as a standalone activity, but should be aligned with the organization’s overall strategic objectives. An effective compliance program will support these objectives.
While maintaining independence, compliance should be integrated with the organization’s financial, risk, quality, environmental and health and safety management systems and its operational requirements and procedures.
Compliance programs should be shaped by an organization’s core values and generally accepted corporate governance, ethical and community standards.
An effective organization-wide compliance program results in being able to demonstrate its commitment to compliance with relevant laws, including legislative requirements, industry codes, organizational standards as well as standards of good corporate governance, ethics and community expectations.
Based on AS3806 (Compliance Processes), AS4360 (Risk) and ISO9001 (Quality), OpsCentre provides a number of compliance management services, including:
• Health checks and reviews of existing compliance systems
• Facilitation of development of compliance programs
• Identification of an organization’s compliance obligations: legal, regulatory and organizational.
• Assisting with documentation of necessary compliance processes and procedures
• Facilitation of development of compliance programs
• Compliance training and awareness programs
• Facilitation of executive compliance management