How Business is Leveraging Business Continuity To Comply with the New Regulation In the wake of spectacular corporate governance failures at several companies, Congress enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 to address the shortcomings of corporate governance and improve the overall controls associated with the management and reporting of corporate financial information. The legislation is… Continue reading Business Continuity in a Sarbanes-Oxley World

There is no magic or mystery to effective communication in a crisis; yet anytime you turn on the news, you will invariably find someone who is making a mess of it. In working with organizations of every size and in nearly every sector, I have found that by following a few simple rules when communicating… Continue reading 20 Rules for Effective Communication in a Crisis

What’s the Difference for the Business Continuity Planner? What are the basic differences between creating a business continuity plan for a multi-billion dollar corporation and creating a business continuity plan for a mom and pop grocery? How about differences between a business function and IT? By this planner, all plans basically are the same; they… Continue reading World Headquarters or Mom and Pop Operation

Today’s headlines are full of disturbing stories about new occurrences and outbreaks of infectious diseases. Some of them such as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), monkeypox, and West Nile virus are new and alarming. In addition, the threat of bioterrorism with deadly agents such as anthrax and smallpox continues to be a concern. Although the… Continue reading Consider the Risk of Infectious Diseases

It’s often said that, other than your spouse or significant other, you can’t pick your family members. We love our parents and grandparents, but in almost every family, there are people who, had we had the opportunity to select, they might not have been chosen. It’s usually that way with the person to whom we… Continue reading Who’s the boss

We are used to thinking of disasters on the grand scale – massive power outages, fires, earthquakes, and other news making events. But with information technology resources, even a small event can have catastrophic, far-reaching effects on a business. The failure of an e-mail server can wreak all manor of havoc on an organization that… Continue reading Systems Continuity on a Shoestring

For the past 28 months, America has experienced one national disaster after another: multi-state blackouts, raging wildfires, floods, violent hurricanes, and more — all leading to costly long-term enterprise and community (local/regional) disruptions. In every instance, these disasters illustrated shortfalls in preparedness and recovery capability across a number of areas, but possibly none as acute… Continue reading Collaboration in BCP Skill Development

Are you having trouble getting the support and recognition your business continuity program needs? Do your executives only give you lip service? Worse yet, do they just expect you to get everything done without their help? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, it’s time to take more drastic measures to engage them… Continue reading Five Ways to Engage Your Executives as Sponsors

It’s hard to believe that only a few years ago people, businesses and institutions didn’t rely on e-mail as their most critical communications tool. Today it is pervasive, used internally and externally to operate global enterprises behind the scenes, conduct business with the outside world, and to manage the myriad of business and personal communications… Continue reading Never a Good Time to be Without Email: Recent Survey Shows E-mail Outages Up in 2003

Information warfare (IW) is not new in the United States. The Department of Defense (DOD) has for approximately 30 years been preparing for and defending against our adversaries’ employment of IW. However, with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the United States, the possibility of the threat of cyber attacks against our infrastructure have dramatically… Continue reading The Real Threat