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Secure in the Knowledge

Category - Business Continuity & Security advice _____________________________________________

Secure in the Knowledge launched by NaCTSO, London First and the Security Service Advice for business and organisations aimed at improving the Security and Business Continuity Planning of organisations was launched today. “Secure in the Knowledge - building a secure business" is the second major initiative from NaCTSO, London First and the Security Service and follows on from the advice detailed in “Expecting the Unexpected".

The 45 page booklet and accompanying CD details the steps organisations of all types should be taking to build better resilience and security. The advice compiled from a range of organisations including the Continuity Forum illustrates the wide range of measures needed to secure the organisation and significantly reduce the risks from a range of threats including Data Theft, Terrorism, Fraud and Business Interruption.

Don't let the unexpected ruin a relationship

Outsourcing managing the relationship honestly 

'Force majeure' is written into many contracts, but it is a mistake to treat it as a boilerplate clause. It is vital that definition and terms are spelt out clearly.

Like so many things left to chance, the modest clause of "force majeure" is written into the terms of many IT outsourcing, credit card, lease, insurance and financial contracts, and could be a disaster just waiting to happen.

So what is force majeure, and why is it sometimes overlooked for serious consideration when spelling it out could benefit both the supplier and the customer?

New research shows British businesses fail to plan for the 'unthinkable'

Far too many organisations are still failing to plan

Research commissioned by Royal & SunAlliance (R&SA), the UK's second largest commercial insurer, has revealed that British businesses are ill-equipped and unprepared to cope in the event of a major incident occurring.

Despite repeated warning of the impact of not planning properly the survey found 59% of British businesses do not have a formal Business Continuity Plan. Only 14% of British businesses have reviewed their contingency plans in the light of last year's terrorist activity and 35% of British businesses are not insured should their existence be threatened by external events.

In recent years, British businesses have faced a number of external events that threatened their existence, such as foot and mouth disease, adverse weather conditions, petrol shortages, industrial disputes and terrorist activity.

Role of Mobiles in a Disaster - report from the GSMA

Category Business Continuity Management BCM - Role of Mobile Communications in a disaster - News


GSM association examines role and performance of Mobile Communications in Emergency Situations

A spate of natural disasters and other emergencies during the past two years has prompted new interest in how technology can help enhance our security. This report assesses the impact that the widespread availability of mobile phones has had on the recovery from specific disasters and atrocities, such as the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the summer floods in central Europe, and terrorist attacks in Istanbul and London.

IBM opens new $8.6 Million Business Recovery Centre in Dublin

Category Business Continuity Management BCM - Business Recovery - News


IBM has announced an investment of €8.6million in its latest Business Continuity and Recovery Services facility in Ireland.

The official opening of the IBM Business Recovery Facility will provide double the number of recovery seats and significantly increase the number of services available for Irish based clients.

The state-of-the-art Business Recovery Centre, located on the  IBM Campus in Mulhuddart, will provide customers with expert support, ensuring business continuity and recovery in any area of business disruption ranging from minor interruptions like moving office to major interruptions such as a company crisis or electricity blackout. IBM now has three facilities in Ireland, two in Dublin and one in Cork. The Recovery Centre will ensure resilience for IBM clients not just for their technologies but for key processes and day to day business activities.

Industry analysts estimate that disaster recovery services are worth €15 million per annum in Ireland and growing.

According to Tom Walsh, Head of IBM Ireland BCRS "The ability to anticipate and adjust to planned and unplanned forces and events, including market fluctuations, requires a proactive approach that takes into account all of companies assets and vulnerabilities. Business resilience is dependent upon risk management and information security. It incorporates Information Technology recovery, availability and business continuity programmes, regulatory compliance, security and privacy initiatives. All are crucial, and all help set the standard for today's forward-focused organisations."

The official opening ceremony on the 17th November included a series of presentations including a special presentation by the Continuity Forum by Chairman Russell Price.

END 


Decontamination following a CBR Event

Category Business Continuity Management - CBR contamination


The planning for business continuity and disaster recovery post CBR chemical biological radiological is often ignored or even potentially worse, incorrectly assessed. This assessment can be assimilated as that of a hazard assessment when the risk manager does not know of combined or symbiotic effects. Post CBR planning may be difficult to assess due to limited knowledge, experience or facts but various information is available on which to assert assumptions. This article attempts to alert the planner to some elements that should be considered.

Economic Consequences of a Pandemic .....

Geary Stitch discusses Active Analysis and Business Continuity 


Active analysis can be subdivided into three categories of possible threats/occurrences that could befall an organization. Dr. Ian Mitroff refers to the three categories as Natural Accidents, Normal Accidents and Abnormal Accidents.

I have renamed them and to differentiate the three aspects of each. That is, the threat, the actual occurrence and the consequence of the occurrence.

7/7 Phone network performance examined and explained

Waht happened with Mobile networks on 7th July

Background

 

Mobile  phones have been with us since the early 1980s and are now an essential part of everyday life. There are currently more than 60 million subscribers in the UK and in a recent survey, most people stated that they would sooner return home to collect their mobile phone than their wallet or purse. 

 

Following the explosions on the morning of 7th July, hundreds of thousands of people used their mobile phones to contact their families and work colleagues. Mobile networks are designed to cope with significant peaks in volumes of calls, and a safety margin is also built in so that even major events do not overload the system.

 

Call volumes on 7th July far exceeded normal levels, and the O2 network alone carried 67% more voice traffic in central London than normal, while text message volumes increased by 20% on the day across the whole country. The O2 network was not damaged by the attacks and we took steps to manage the demand. The large number of calls did mean that there was network congestion in parts of London, but most customers were able to make calls after several attempts. 

 

Actions taken

 

Let us consider the equivalent situation on a motorway. Normally the traffic flows freely, and vehicles are able to move at will. Occasionally however, an accident, a breakdown or bad weather cause the traffic to slow down and congestion inevitably follows.

 

Mostly this is short-lived and the situation recovers quickly, but sometimes the incident is more serious and the congestion lasts much longer. When this happens, the Police have a number of options open to them in order not only to reduce congestion at the point of the incident, but also to keep further traffic from entering the motorway and exacerbating the problem.

 

In much the same way, mobile network operators have a number of call traffic management options open to them. For example, we can make network changes in the immediate area of the incident which will normally remove localised congestion quite quickly, and we can restrict additional call traffic from entering the system which reduces the load on the network, especially the gateways between the fixed and mobile networks. 

 

These controls were used on the 7th July by all network operators, with the intention of preserving the integrity of the networks while still allowing as much traffic to flow as possible, but the situation was complicated by having four major incidents confined in a fairly small geographical area. This inevitably resulted in some customers experiencing the busy signal when attempting to make a call.

 

Those people who were unable to make voice calls turned to text messaging and again, inevitably, the text messaging systems became congested, delaying the time it took for a message to be delivered. 

 

Industry working together

 

Co-operation among the fixed and mobile networks is the key to an effective response to a major incident. The telecoms industry runs a tripartite forum consisting of fixed and mobile network operators, the industry regulator Ofcom and various areas of central government which comes together on a conference bridge on such occasions, with the objective of maintaining the integrity of the Critical National Infrastructure. This forum was convened several times during 7th July, and the spirit of co-operation which it encouraged ensured that all operators worked together to minimise the impact on emergency responders as well as the public at large. 

 

Emergency restrictions

 

Just before noon, the Police requested that O2 should apply a set of network access restrictions known as Access Overload Control or ACCOLC in a 1 kilometre area around Aldgate. This facility makes the network in the immediate area unavailable to the public at large, but permits a pre-agreed list of emergency responders to use the network in order to save lives and protect the infrastructure. The facility was removed later in the afternoon, but during that time, the O2 network would have been unavailable for all normal calls (with the exception of emergency calls to 112 and 999) within a kilometre or so of Aldgate station. 

 

Recommendations

 

Should events be repeated, there are a number of steps which individuals and businesses can take in order to improve the situation.  Encourage staff and individuals who might be in the affected area to call from their mobiles to a fixed line number rather than calling from fixed lines to mobiles   this is less onerous on the networks and relieves congestion.  Keep calls as short as possible: once you have established that an individual is safe, clear the call so that others can do the same.  Arrange a central 0800 number to which members of staff can call which will provide information regarding the incident and advice or instructions to staff. 

 

We would like to thank David Sutton, Network Continuity & Restoration Manager for O2 (UK) Limited for this piece. 

 

If you would like to know more about how your organisation can get involved and benefit from working with the Continuity Forum, please email us HERE! or call on + 44 (0) 208 993 1599.

 


2005 Industry awards - VOTE NOW!

CIR, the UK business continuity magazine, is once again asking for votes for its prestigious Business Continuity Awards.

The UK Business Continuity Awards will be presented at a gala awards dinner on Thursday 12th May at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London ’s Park Lane.

This year’s categories are:

Business Continuity Manager of the Year
Lifetime Achievement Award
Public Sector Business Continuity Manager of the Year
Voluntary Sector Business Continuity Manager of the Year
Industry Newcomer
Business Continuity Strategy of the Year
Business Continuity Service Provider of the Year
Industry Personality of the Year
Insurance Services Provider of the Year
Most Effective Recovery of the Year
Business Continuity Consultant
Cross-Border and Cross-Sector Continuity and Operational Risk Strategy
Most Innovative Product of the Year
Student of the Year
Data Storage Strategy of the Year.

To vote click on the CIR banner! or visit them directly at www.businesscontinuityawards.com.

Small business: A chronic lack of preparedness

Bombs, hurricanes, power cuts. What does it take to get small and medium-sized enterprises to prepare for the worst with a business continuity plan?
 
The London Chamber of Commerce, whose members have suffered all of the above in the last 20 years, often on multiple occasions, believes that as many as 44 per cent of SMEs in the capital have no contingency plans.
 
The chronic lack of preparedness on the part of small and medium-sized companies is the greatest avoidable threat to the capital today, Michael Cassidy, the chamber's president, said earlier this month: "Directors owe it to themselves, their employees and other companies in the supply chain which depend on them to take action now."
 
Time and money are rare commodities in most small businesses, so the prospect of having to spend thousands of pounds on new security equipment or weeks formulating a business continuity plan often makes companies unwilling to act.
 

Event - Secure in the Knowledge - Bristol 4th October

Category Business Continuity Event _________________________________

Regional Launch Secure in the Knowledge

Date - 4th October - 08:30 to 12:00 Location - The Council House, College Green, Bristol

Following on from our “Ship Shape & Bristol Fashion" Event in May this year, the Council is pleased to announce that they will be hosting the Regional Launch of "Secure in the Knowledge" Business advice booklet and video.

Produced in partnership by the National Terrorism Security office and London First. The Launch will be hosted in the unique setting of the main conference hall in Bristol City Council House, and will include a Senior Figure from the Security world, along with accredited speakers and experts in the field of Business Continuity and national security.

Bristol is the regional capital of the South West and is home not only to many major businesses but also to over 13,000 small enterprises, providing employment and holding responsibility for many thousands of people.

It is expected that this prestigious event will attract a large audience, offering potential networking with businesses of all sizes in the local area. We urge early registration.

The morning event is offered free of charge to delegates and is aimed at offering businesses in the area unbiased and straightforward advice on Security, Business Continuity Management and Resilience Planning. Delegates are being invited from the Bristol and the SW region, and other interested parties. Please note that registration is required. 


Event - Pan London Authority Forum - inaugral meeting 29/9

Category Business Continuity Event _________________________________

Pan London Authority Forum 

Date - 29th September 2005 - London Please note this is a PRIVATE Forum delivered through our Public Sector Support programme. Attendees will be representatives of the 33 London Boroughs and/or relevant and connected partners only

THESE SESSIONS WILL BE STRICTLY GOVERNED BY THE CHATHAM HOUSE RULE Creating a Pan London Local Authority community for BCM Introduction The CCA was laid before parliament at the end of July 2005 together with regulations and guidance covering England. By Nov 15 2005 local authorities have to comply with the act, with the exception of the duty to promote BCM to wider community that comes into force on the 15th May 2006.

Special Event - Secure in the Knowledge - Resilience in the South East - 25/10

Resilience is defined as 'as the ability of the community, services, area or infrastructure to withstand the consequences of an incident'.

Business Continuity Seminar and Resilience Exhibition 25th October 2005 - Camberley Theatre - 09.30 - 14.00

> Business Continuity & Insurance - Event 20th Sept - London

Special Insurance Event 

Preference will be given in the first instance to Full Forum members and partners. Please note that this event is strictly hosted under CHATHAM HOUSE RULES.

Location: London Date: 20th September 2005 Special Presentation Event

Securing corporate premises: Some useful tricks to keep your business safe

Security in the workplace 

In recent years an increasing chunk of companies corporate security or business continuity budget has been spent on maintaining back-up sites where data can be stored or from which the business could be run in an emergency. However, security consultants point out that risk management begins at home with measures to safeguard company headquarters, branches, factories and greenfield sites.

For new buildings, once the nature of the risks to the business has been assessed, this means careful planning of the layout and configuration of the site or office and security professionals should be part of the process.  “Security needs to be incorporated at the earliest possible stage,  says Paul Burry, a senior consultant at Control Risks which advises clients on their physical security measures.  “In project teams security should be in there from the start - and it should not be the retro-fit or the bolt on later.  

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