There has been some fairly active discussion on a few of the industry forums recently about how standards such as BS25999 and ISO22301 are being seen as potentially even more 'red tape' by many businesses and SME companies in particular.
A key comment made was that many smaller organisations are under tremendous pressure at the moment, with more loaded on them by adding Business Continuity to the mix through the new ISO. It was summed up by the title … "It's unlikely that SME's will welcome the new standard with open arms".
While I have great sympathy with the position taken about the plethora of regulations, legislation and other seemingly nonsense GUMPF* that surrounds us and eats away our time, I confess unsurprisingly though it's very hard to agree this is at all valid when it comes to Business Continuity.
Some of the sharper eyed amongst you will have noticed that pretty recently we have added a new feature to the Business Continuity Forum Website. Its up there in the top right hand corner ... our monthly charity.
The Continuity, Emergency and Security aspects of industry have a close involvement and understanding of what can go wrong and how lives can be ruined through a myriad of causes. Many of us have witnessed first hand some of the terrible things that do happen in this world.
In August 2011, Gayle Hedgecock was the guest speaker at BANG! During an entertaining evening, she posed the question: "Just how many Continuity questionnaires must I fill in each year?"
In her case, it was scores of the things; others were lucky and had fewer to do, but it became clear that ALL the questionnaires were different, even though in reality they were asking the same questions. It was just that the questions were phrased slightly differently, or were in a different order. In some cases, they were asking questions that had little relevance to Continuity...
You can replay the MIR3 Webinar that looks at the special considerations and challenges for Business Continuity that need to be addressed within Healthcare organisations.
The Amazon EC2 "failure" has probably caused their customers to take a hard look at their business continuity plans and Amazon working hard to improve their own resilience so that they can recover the confidence of their customers and maintain a dominant market position.
For some time the potential offered by the cloud has been the topic of discussion between BC and IT Security Professionals. Some are positive and see the potential for economies and resilience to be improved, others see the risks of creating a critical and possibly difficult to address dependency. Both are right and the example set by Amazons embarrassing failure is in many ways potentially fortuitous to the industry as a whole as it highlights the basic issue involved. Stuff will fail and you have to plan thoroughly for it!
Submitted by Webmaster01 on Fri, 04/15/2011 - 10:09
Thought I would share a short note received today from Tim Armit of Clifton Risk Consulting, an experienced Business Continuity man, where he notes/compares the sporting activities over the next few days that bear a marked similarity to 'other' events that the capital will be coping with.
Working in the business continuity field can be challenging, even frustrating, but sometimes there are moments of clarity, a time when you realise why the challenges and frustrations are worth the stress.
Over the past few months we have been working towards the launch of VSAT - the vulnerability self-assessment toolkit with NACTSO. It hasn't been too easy. The public sector is under tremendous financial pressure and money is more than just a little tight. For 18 months, the Continuity Forum and NACTSO have been working against time and budget constraints to develop a shared vision, something that can make a real difference to the safety and resilience of all our communities.
Protecting our social and commercial centres is a vital task for the police and security services, but one that cannot be truly effective without wider participation from the community. This is where VSAT fits in.
Verdant looks at the communications around the flu epidemic
Andrew Lansley's decision to pull the Flu advertising campaign in the run up to Christmas has caused a huge amount of debate and criticism targeted at the Government who have been accused of putting the nation's health at risk in order to save money.
EU FloodCommand is a new UK-led, EU co-funded project to improve cooperation between member states as they plan and implement a joined-up response to coastal flooding disasters. Coastal flooding has been a cause of major loss of life and destruction of property over recent decades across Europe, and the problem is due to get worse with global warming and predicted rises in sea levels. The EU has agreed to fund the project up to 80 per cent of its overall eligible costs.
Verdant looks at the issues the Wikileaks scandal has thrown up
The Wikileaks story is surely going to be as painful as the MP’s expenses scandal with a drip feed of information as the journalists analyse and read material.
Drexel University’s Department of Public Safety uses Intelligent Notification™ to alert the University community during emergencies and help its responders quickly manage incidents.
The implications of the UK police force's new training regime
Earlier this month, Verdant asked how useful raising the terror threat level was in preparing the public for potential terrorist activity and concluded that such announcements need to be surrounded by a sound communications framework to have the necessary impact in preparing citizens accordingly.
The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced a total of £2million to improve flood rescue capability. Grants totalling approximately £650,000 have been awarded from the fund today.
There has been some fairly active discussion 
For some time the potential offered by the cloud has been the topic of discussion between BC and IT Security Professionals. Some are positive and see the potential for economies and resilience to be improved, others see the risks of creating a critical and possibly difficult to address dependency. Both are right and the example set by Amazons embarrassing failure is in many ways potentially fortuitous to the industry as a whole as it highlights the basic issue involved. Stuff will fail and you have to plan thoroughly for it!
