Fatima Azeem recently relocated to Canada and will be working for PwC as a manager in risk assurance. She previously worked in a prestigious consultancy, government, and federal organizations in UAE such as Department of Energy and National Emergency Crisis &...
Read and network. Vaishali Jain said both things will help young professionals in understanding the concepts and real-life applications of different aspects of business continuity. She suggested they also attend BCM conferences to give them an opportunity to learn...
EDITOR’S NOTE: The DRJ Career Development Committee is supporting this series of articles featuring the career paths of industry professionals. Throughout this series of candid interviews, we hope to provide career advice to our readers by highlighting lessons...
During Hurricane Sandy in 2012 the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ were closed for two days and the super storm ended up costing New York State a staggering $32 billion, New York City $19 billion and the U.S. economy an estimated $65 billion. Seven years later,...
It’s almost the end of 2019. I’ll pause to let that sink in if you haven’t looked at the calendar in a while. It’s hard to believe in the next few weeks it will be a sprint to finish our 2019 goals and objectives by the end of the year. Did you exercise more? Read...
Serious preparation is required to successfully manage in a crisis. Being prepared requires two things from each and every responder: Be in a constant state of readiness. Since you won’t know the precise nature of the crisis in advance (timing, location, or specifics...
Are you prepared for a ransomware attack? Rarely a day goes by that I’m not asked about ransomware or end up in a conversation about ransomware. Questions range from “What is ransomware?” to “How can ransomware be avoided?” and everything in between. Depending on...
Every organization would love to press an “easy” button that implements a disaster recovery (DR) solution for its IT environment. Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) can possibly achieve this objective by selecting an all-in-one disaster recovery-as-a-service (AIO...
The simplest way to determine if a program is executable is to measure the level of residual risk across its critical recovery plans. What is residual risk? Residual risk is the risk that remains after all efforts have been made to identify and eliminate risk (i.e.,...
Along with being a passionate business continuity planner, I am a voracious reader. I enjoy all kinds of literature, but my favorite genre is science fiction. I am fascinated by the discussion of people and technology which often forms the foundation of good sci-fi:...
As a technology professional, I like to tinker in home automation and smart devices. I have two WiFi networks at home, Cat6 cables to every room, multiple gigabit switches, and routers, all connected to an Internet service provider (ISP) gigabit fiber network. When my...
Security breaches and ransomware. Wildfires, flooding, and hurricanes. This is what most organizations have in mind when they think about business disruption and plan for business resiliency. All of these events are costly, disruptive, and bring normal operations to a...
I was initially taken aback upon reviewing the results of a recent career survey conducted by a disaster recovery certification organization about “the changing role of the resilience professional.” According to the white paper, supply chain management came in last,...
A myriad of scenarios can take a business down, risking damage to reputation, regulatory fines, and data loss. It’s key to have an IT disaster recovery plan, tied to security incident response and your organization’s wider plan for business continuity. But what...
Rob van den Eijnden, MBCI, CISA, CRISC, Lead Auditor ISO 22301, is the global business continuity and resilience leader for Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA, hereafter Philips) functionally reporting to the group chief of operations (COO). Philips is a leading...
After faith and family, what is more important than your career? Are you regularly investing in your career? Many people do not. They go to work, work non-stop all day, then go home to do it all again the next day. Disaster Recovery Journal recognizes our careers not...
Our 62nd conference is quickly approaching, and we’re working hard to prepare for it. It takes months of behind-the-scenes work to put together such an established conference. From high-quality presentations by the industry’s most well-known and respected...
With workplace violence incidents on the rise, there is no excuse to not have a solid operating Workplace Violence Plan in place. After all, knowledge increases confidence, confidence increases decisiveness, and it is decisive action in a critical incident that saves...
Have you ever been to a meeting where the presenter displays a slide packed with percentiles, bar charts, and awkwardly colored stoplight diagrams? Did the confusing, overly complex, and poorly designed metrics distract you from the intent of the meeting? Did the...
Service consistency and quality is an expectation of all stakeholders at all times. The people depending on you want peace of mind and no unpleasant surprises. Providing consistent services implies achieving sameness, uniformity, and fairness in the delivery or...
Once, long ago, I was on a date with an attractive young woman and so enamored with her that I began to plan out when we could see each other again … while still on the date. That day we planned several more dates, and within months, we were married. Has anyone ever...
Organizations, regardless of their size, finally have access to viable disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) solutions from multiple providers. Further, organizations may obtain DRaaS solutions to equip them to perform recoveries on-premises or in a provider’s cloud....
In May, NOAA released its predictions for the 2019 hurricane season. Central Pacific storms were predicted to be above normal activity, while Atlantic storms were predicted to be near normal. Of course, the definition of normal does not suggest anyone should rest...
President John Adams once said, “We are a nation of laws, not of men.” While the statement is foundational to the fourth amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure, it is broader in interpretation and is not unique to American history. The “rule of...
Derek Jenkins ([email protected]) is responsible for security and emergency management at Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), ensuring the company meets all federal, state, and local government security and emergency management requirements. Jenkins earned a...
While many have spent the summer enjoying much-needed downtime, we’ve been hard at work at DRJ. Right now, we’re finishing up plans for our most amazing conference yet. DRJ Fall 2019 will be held at the award-winning and captivating JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort...
Technology can sometimes give organizations a false sense of security. If you have the technology and automation in place, you might believe you can simply press a button and recover if you experience a disaster, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Disaster...
Corporate risk managers take note. According to research conducted by Carlson Wagonlit Travel, a global business travel management organization, 47 percent – nearly half – of business travelers from the U.S. said they would choose points over personal safety. “The...
Public services being provided by police departments to citizens in our nation’s cities are changing rapidly. This is due to the changing ethnic composition of our society, the national enhancement of police services, the greater use of new technologies by our police...
In today’s world – where data can reside almost anywhere – protecting your business from threats can be complex and costly. Businesses often struggle with confidence in their ability to recover from disaster and defend against evolving threats like...
Five ways to fortify and help protect city governments from ransomware attacks Ransomware hackers are trekking from city to city around the world, shutting down government services, hospitals, first responders, school districts and universities. According to a CNN...
In today’s world, there are plenty of social, economic, and political uncertainties. Businesses are constantly confronted with an ever-increasing list of risks to address. These range from high-impact, unpredictable, and sometimes even rare events. That’s why it’s...
As part of every business plan, there should be a disaster recovery approach that plans for natural, cyber, and emergency situations. Disaster recovery plans help data centers stay competitive by helping to provide 24/7 service to their customers while decreasing the...
On March 5, 2019 our staff was notified of a depression forming and a large crack in the pavement along southbound lanes of North Pine Hills Road just north of Pipes O The Glen Way. Upon receiving the complaint, our staff immediately visited the area and according...
PHOENIX, Ariz. – DRJ Fall 2019 conference has concluded amid rave reviews. The four-day event featured more than 65 sessions, 85 speakers, 80 exhibitors, and unlimited networking opportunities. More than 1,000 eager participants attended this exclusive...
This article first appeared on the BCMMETRICS website. Business continuity programs sink or swim depending on whether they have the support of senior management. In today’s post, we’ll share eight tips to help you bring your bosses on board in support of your BC...
This article was first published on the MHA Consulting website. Over the past several weeks we have discussed mock disaster exercises and how to plan and facilitate them, as well as different types of exercises – large and small. In today’s blog, we’ll discuss some...
This blog post first appeared on Sungard Availability Services’ website. When it comes to avoiding the potential profit losses and pitfalls associated with natural disasters, power outages, cyberattacks, or other unforeseen disturbances, you cannot afford to be...
This article first appeared on BCMmetrics.com Many companies put off starting a business continuity program because they think doing so is too hard. In today’s post, we’ll boil down the process of launching a BC program to three clear, simple steps. Obviously,...
Amid a bustling medical practice, billing office, surgery center or health system, security may be the farthest thing on the minds of employees. But one critical mistake that breaches security protocols can cost a healthcare provider millions. With the constant queue...
Product Manager, Eaton Significant events like hurricanes, floods and explosions can cause companies to experience enormous loss of property, production and revenue – not to mention threats to personnel safety. That’s why it is essential to have a...
This article first appeared at MHA Consulting. Miniature mock disaster exercises are a small thing that can make a big difference in terms of an organization’s preparedness for emergencies. In today’s post, we’ll lay out the benefits of such micro...
EDITOR’S NOTE: The DRJ Career Development Committee is supporting this series of articles featuring the career paths of industry professionals. Throughout this series of candid interviews, we hope to provide career advice to our readers by highlighting lessons...
Stephanie Strazisar’s interest in business continuity started during her graduate school studies at the University of Maryland University College. While pursuing a master’s degree in emergency management, she learned the interdependence among infrastructure sectors...
Acronis Backup on Scale Computing HC3 helps IT teams keep organizations running with archiving, fast backup, full availability and no downtime, achieving best ROI and TCO INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Scale Computing, a market leader in edge computing,...
With automation on the rise, Steven Steckler of Sentry Claims Group reminds insurers of their most pivotal responsibility in claims process: empathy LAFAYETTE, La. – From AI and automation to analytics and smart sensors, technology plays an ever-increasing...
This article first appeared on ISO.org. One of the most effective ways of preventing fires in buildings is to reduce the level of oxygen in the air. The world’s first International Standard for oxygen reduction systems has just been published. Prevention is...
This article first appeared at MHA Consulting. The job of facilitating a mock disaster exercise is not for the faint of heart: it’s a critical, high-pressure task that takes a rare combination of skills. In today’s post, we’ll look at why the role is...
$7,500 donated for Denver-area firefighters, police DENVER, Colo. – A pair of fundraising events sponsored by Interstate Restoration will infuse some first-responder organizations in the Denver metro area with at least $7,500. Interstate was a primary sponsor of...
Job Description The Director Business Continuity – Comcast Business will play a leading role in managing the Business Continuity Management System (BCMS) activities of Comcast Business (policy, planning, implementation and operation, performance assessment,...
New Infrastructure Will Help Advance Public Safety, Improve Connectivity for Area Residents, Businesses and Visitors Talbot County’s first responders are getting a major boost in their wireless communications with the addition of a new, purpose-built cell...
As part of National Preparedness Month, FEMA’s Ready Campaign and the Ad Council promote being “Prepared, Not Scared” in new PSAs and online videos FEMA and the Ad Council kick off National Preparedness Month with new public service announcements...
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Tachyum Inc., a developer of the smallest and fastest general-purpose 64-core processor, today announced it has joined the Compute Express Link (CXL) Consortium, a group of companies dedicated to advancing a new, open-industry standard...
Builds on existing DDoS protection to deliver unparalleled defense against malicious attacks on websites and applications GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – US Signal, a leading data center services provider, today announced the launch of its managed Website and...
HVM achieved perfect safety record in 2018 COLUMBUS, Ohio – High Voltage Maintenance Corporation (HVM), a subsidiary of Vertiv, recently received two industry safety awards for 2018, after a year without a single reportable safety incident and no lost time...
High Operating Temperature Tolerance Reduce Cooling Costs and Carbon Footprint LOS ANGELES – VYCON (www.vyconenergy.com), a designer and manufacturer of environmentally friendly, high-speed energy storage flywheel systems, announces the addition of the...
The National Hurricane Center is currently forecasting Tropical Storm Dorian may develop into a Category 1 hurricane when it approaches Puerto Rico Wednesday morning, bringing heavy rain and moderate-to-strong winds. History shows that storm tracks can change quickly....
ON WINDOWS SERVER 2008 R2 IN AZURE INTRO On July 9, 2019, support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 will end. That means the end of regular security updates. However, if you move those SQL Server instances to Azure, Microsoft will give you three years of Extended...
Enhancing the Contact Center to Improve Customer Experiences in Real-Time with the Power of Cloud Data Analytics News Summary: Cisco intends to acquire CloudCherry* to enhance Contact Center portfolio. CloudCherry provides predictive analytics, rich customer journey...
Many enterprises are attracted to the benefits cloud presents. A few obvious advantages include convenience, scalability, and flexibility, packed with the ability to modernize existing IT assets and prepare for future needs. However, getting to this place of improved...
This article first appeared on BCMMETRICS.com. Good documentation is one of the pillars of a strong business continuity program, but it’s one that often gets left out. In today’s post, we’ll look at how to create BC documentation, which parts of your...
Customers can now choose from self-managed DRaaS, enterprise license mobility, multi-cloud replication and stretch layer 2 failover GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – US Signal, a leading data center services provider, today announced new enhancements to its...
Chief Marketing Officer at Datto Hurricane season is upon us. Hurricanes and coastal storms can cause immense destruction and leave communities struggling to recover. One of the biggest impacts of these storms is often not apparent to the naked eye — damage to...
Spencer recognized by Indianapolis community for his exceptional professional contributions, energy and attitude, and community commitment SANTA CLARA, Calif. and ST. LOUIS, Mo. – InterVision, a leading IT strategic service provider, today announced...
https://www.sungardas.com/en/blog/container-security-cartoon-whats-in-your-containers/ If you’re using container technologies, ask yourself this: Do you actually know what’s inside your containers? Do they contain any malicious software libraries?...
This blog post first appeared on the DH2i website. Aside from the internet itself, The Internet of Things has the potential to become the most transformative technological application of our times. Conservative estimates indicate it will encompass...
LENEXA, Kan. – Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) joined the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and federal partners, in close coordination with experts across governmental agencies, academia and non-governmental organizations, to...
SAN FRANCISCO – IObit, the world’s leading system utilities and security software provider, today announces the new release of IObit Uninstaller. IObit Uninstaller 9 uses new technologies to make program uninstallation more thorough and improve...
WASHINGTON — Today, FEMA and its emergency management partners released Daniel Homsey’s PrepTalk “Neighborfest – Building Resilience from the Block Up". Homsey shares his tools for building resilient communities at the neighborhood level...
Job DescriptionBusiness Continuity Management (BCM) provides a broad range of assessment; design and implementation services that help the organization identify and respond to risks that can disrupt operations. Services include: performing Business Interruption...
Disaster recovery is tricky. It’s not sexy, it’s not exciting, and it’s more or less invisible until something is really wrong. No wonder so many companies are missing the mark when it comes to DR. Out of sight, out of mind. One of the big problems...
Today, FEMA awarded $30 million in supplemental humanitarian funding to the National Board for the Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP). These funds are for local social services that have provided assistance on or after January 1, 2019 to southern border...
This article originally appeared at MHA Consulting. Given the importance of CM training, I wanted to give you some idea of how a company can plan a quality mock disaster exercise based on our experience at MHA Consulting over the past two decades plus. The secret to...
Broadcast Engineering Innovator Takes on New Role at Leading Strategic Service Provider SANTA CLARA, Calif. & ST. LOUIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–InterVision, a leading IT strategic service provider, today announced that Ray Panahon has joined the company as...
NEW YORK– Inc. magazine today revealed that Zerto is No. 1567 on its annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. This ranking places Zerto within the top third of the most successful companies in...
AUSTIN, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Inc. magazine today revealed that AlertMedia, the world’s leading emergency communication provider, ranked No. 285 on its prestigious annual Inc. 5000 list which recognizes the fastest-growing private...
NEW YORK – Inc. magazine today revealed that Denny Cherry & Associates Consulting [DCAC] is No. 2056 on its annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. The list represents a...
GLENDALE HEIGHTS, Ill. – Digital Data Centers, a premier provider of automated invoicing, statements, & checks as well as critical document printing, payment management and business continuity services, is pleased to announce the hiring of Roberta A. Malesh...
ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Otava, a global leader in secure cloud services for enterprise and channel partners, announced today that it was selected by Gallagher-Kaiser (GK), a supplier of paint finishing systems, commercial HVAC and mechanical...
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Tachyum Inc. today announced that it has joined the Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG), a 700+ member association committed to advancing the non-proprietary PCI technology to yield a reliable, scalable...
SAN FRANCISCO – SwiftStack, the leader in multi-cloud data storage and management, today announced its new Technology Partner Program and the “Works with SwiftStack” designation, which provide customers with the confidence that validated...
Natalie Edwards got her start in the business continuity industry in 2015. She is the business continuity program coordinator for Navy Federal Credit Union and currently responsible for coordinating the overall administration of their BC...
Nexsan Unity, Unified Storage Solution, Serves as Backbone in File-Based Workflow Editorial and Editing Processes THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – Nexsan®, part of the StorCentric® group and a global leader in unified storage solutions including...
DENVER, Colo. – Axcient, a leader in business availability and cloud migration solutions for Managed Service Providers (MSPs), today announced technology enhancements to help lower the total cost of ownership (TCO), including unlimited storage for its...
The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Continuity Programs has released today the Business Process Analysis and Business Impact Analysis User Guide. The document is intended for use by whole community stakeholders. It incorporates the concepts found...
https://bcmmetrics.com/business-continuity-rfp/ When clients issue RFPs for business continuity services that are vague and contradictory, the result is a disappointment for the client and bewilderment for prospective BC service providers. In today’s...
New Director of Sales for East Americas, Emily Weeks, and Director of Channel Sales in the Americas, Eric Barnhart, join the team to drive continued success in the channel BOSTON, Mass. – Zerto, an industry leader for IT resilience, today announced it has hired...
EDITOR’S NOTE: The DRJ Career Development Committee is supporting this series of articles featuring the career paths of industry professionals. Throughout this series of candid interviews, we hope to provide career advice to our readers by highlighting lessons...
We are more connected than ever, bringing with it the joys, and risks, of our digital world. Cybersecurity is a growing concern, with attacks against business almost doubling over the last few years and is an increasingly significant threat to global stability....
The Two Companies Will Work Together to Deliver AI Solutions to U.S. Government and Private Sector Clients, and Explore Opportunities to Turn Existing Lab-Based Models into Applied Solutions MCLEAN, Va. & AUSTIN, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Booz Allen...
One of those words—especially for baby boomers who grew up during the Cold War—is “radiation.” Many people innately relate it to their elementary school years of under-the-school-desk exercises, public yellow rectangle signs with three inverted black triangles noting...
National Preparedness Month (NPM), is recognized each September to promote family and community disaster and emergency planning now and throughout the year. The 2019 theme is Prepared, Not Scared. Be Ready for Disasters 2019 Weekly Themes...
DENVER, Colo. – Axcient, a leader in business availability and cloud migration solutions for Managed Service Providers (MSPs), today revealed the Axcient Marketing Portal (AMP), a new marketing enablement tool for its partner community. AMP...
In the words of Thomas Edison, the value of an idea lies in the using of it. Yeah, I’ve used that quote a lot to talk about the value of data. Data isn’t inherently valuable. But when you use it to better understand customers or to identify bottlenecks in...
The digital economy is breaking down barriers to employment by empowering tech-savvy professionals to work remotely The gig economy is showing no sign of slowing down. Solutions like Fiverr and Upwork make it easier than ever to find the right person to swoop in and...
News Summary: Cisco intent to acquire Voicea* represents another proof point in Cisco’s continuous commitment to making Webex the collaboration platform-of-choice for the best employee experience. As part of the Webex portfolio, our first focus is to use Voicea...
By Dave Bermingham, Technical Evangelist at SIOS Technology High availability and disaster recovery protections both require redundant resources configured to minimize or eliminate single points of failure. Because failures sometimes occur on a large scale, a best...
Safety signs are essential for preventing accidents and injury. Symbols that are internationally agreed and globally used in safety signs ensure clarity and consistency, regardless of language, culture or setting. The ISO standard that is a reference for safety signs...
Company Launches Cyber Threat Horizon for Continuous Visibility into the Threat Landscape WESTFORD, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC., (NASDAQ: NTCT), a leading provider of service assurance and security, today announced the findings of...
DALLAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, today was first to offer detection and response capabilities integrated across email, network, endpoint, server and cloud...
New offerings to provide healthcare stakeholders with crucial guidance on conducting organizational risk assessments, remediating compliance gaps, and meeting third-party assurance requirements FARMINGTON, Conn. – The Electronic Healthcare Network...
SANTA CLARA, Calif. – As the first and only company shipping PCIe® Gen4x4 NVMe SSD solutions, Phison Electronics is the industry leader in enabling high-performance computing for bandwidth-hungry applications. In developing these solutions, Phison is...
As part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) ongoing efforts to support state, local, tribal and territorial partners, Acting Secretary KevinK. McAleenan today announced final allocations of $350 million for six Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 DHS...
Hindsight is 20/20; it’s easy to look back on past mistakes and identify ways to prevent them from reoccurring, especially when it comes to breaches reported on the Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) “wall of shame.” To better serve our healthcare...
EDITOR’S NOTE: The DRJ Career Development Committee is supporting this series of articles featuring the career paths of industry professionals. Throughout this series of candid interviews, we hope to provide career advice to our readers by highlighting lessons...
EDITOR’S NOTE: The DRJ Career Development Committee is supporting this series of articles featuring the career paths of industry professionals. Throughout this series of candid interviews, we hope to provide career advice to our readers by highlighting lessons...
EDITOR’S NOTE: The DRJ Career Development Committee is supporting this series of articles featuring the career paths of industry professionals. Throughout this series of candid interviews, we hope to provide career advice to our readers by highlighting lessons...
EDITOR’S NOTE: The DRJ Career Development Committee is supporting this series of articles featuring the career paths of industry professionals. Throughout this series of candid interviews, we hope to provide career advice to our readers by highlighting lessons...
EDITOR’S NOTE: The DRJ Career Development Committee is supporting this series of articles featuring the career paths of industry professionals. Throughout this series of candid interviews, we hope to provide career advice to our readers by highlighting lessons...
EDITOR’S NOTE: The DRJ Career Development Committee is supporting this series of articles featuring the career paths of industry professionals. Throughout this series of candid interviews, we hope to provide career advice to our readers by highlighting lessons...
Doniella Mckoy, CBCP, discovered emergency management after watching the Will Smith movie “I Am Legend.” “I wanted to be the person who made sure everyone got out of the city before a disaster wiped everyone out,” said Mckoy. She said her first position after earning...
Zachary Falb did not begin his career in business continuity and disaster recovery. In fact, he was completing contract work as a project manager and took a short-term job as a coordinator for a major airline that was starting a business continuity program. Initially...
Sachin Kumar Singh is a recognized business continuity management expert with more than 10 years of experience covering motorsports, telecommunication, utility, manufacturing, distribution, and government organizations. Over the years, Singh has been instrumental in...
EDITOR’S NOTE: The DRJ Career Development Committee is supporting this series of articles featuring the career paths of industry professionals. Throughout this series of candid interviews, we hope to provide career advice to our readers by highlighting lessons...
As a young professional, Naomi Hill already sees herself as becoming a lifelong business continuity professional. In fact, she can’t imagine doing anything else. She says this particular field allows her to put some of her strongest skills into practice. “I enjoy the...
After the tragedies of Sept. 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina occurred while he was pursuing his bachelor’s degree, Luis Tapia wanted to help the communities recover and heal. He focused on his studies on hazards and disasters. At that time he worked at the American...
Hila Haidari is a risk analyst for the FHLB Office of Finance. She has been working for her current employer for one year. She began her career in the compliance department and later transitioned to business continuity after her contract ended. Haidari hopes to...
Selma Coutinho is a young professional from Brazil who recently relocated to Plano, Texas. Coutinho is head of business continuity management CoE Americas at Ericsson. She has been working in the business continuity and disaster recovery field for the last 12 years,...
Tina Klaskala has transitioned through a fascinating professional evolution. Having started her response career as a wild land firefighter with the US Forest Service in the 2000s, she was assigned to the front line of fighting destruction and protecting threatened...
As a young professional, Amanda B. Nolan, who is a management consultant with The Kavi Group, is still taking advice and learning from others. She credits her mentor, Chris Green, who introduced her to the business continuity profession and provided her with...
“Business continuity is not about checking a box. It Is about people and community resiliency, business resumption, crisis communication, evacuation procedures, exercise, drills, simulations, BC/DR techniques and activities that can be applied to our day-to-day...
What could go wrong? It’s this question that gets Ashley Martin, a senior consultant with Avalution Consulting, hungry for knowledge and opportunities. It’s also the one key question Martin says she and other young professionals should always be asking. When creating...
“Ask a lot of questions.” “Take risks to challenge the status quo.” “This field is ever-changing. Dare to affect change.” This is just a sampling of the advice Jimmie Jones, a BCDR analyst with Zendesk, Inc. would give fellow young BC professionals. With five years of...
There is nothing better than meeting young professionals who are truly excited about and committed to a career in business continuity. It’s this level of passion and zest for learning that keeps the business continuity industry growing and thriving. One such young...
As the saying goes, it’s not just what you know but who you know. Having access to the right people with the right experience at the right time has been a career-definer for Ryan Hietpas. Hietpas is a business continuity analyst with Great Lakes Higher Education, and...
“In my early 20’s, I was working in a security command center and jumped at every opportunity to manage incidents when they came through the hotline. One day after all stakeholders dropped from the incident call, and it was just me and the BC director left, I gathered...
Not every career provides continual opportunities for learning, growth, specialization, and frankly excitement. It is this and more that gets Katie Fischer fired up about her career in business continuity. Having worked in the field for 13 years, Fischer, a business...
Often it’s the lucky discoveries that lead us on the most exciting career paths. This is just what happened to Kendra Wackt, a business continuity analyst with Country Financial. As Wackt tells us, “It was pure luck! I started working as an administrator in the...
We all know that the field of business continuity is very broad. The range of careers and roles that these careers entail in incredibly deep – a good thing but also an obstacle. For young professionals starting their career in business continuity, it can be...
“It’s like being a superhero who swoops in during bad situations, well-prepared, and saves the day with help of a trusting team.” This is what Darshika Dixit would jokingly tell people who are curious about a career in business continuity. As a technology consultant...
Nearing the end of his junior year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, James Heath was looking for an internship in risk management. Even though he had never heard of business continuity he recognized the parallels with his risk management and finance major and...
When Brian Knox took a class on risk assessment and business continuity at the University of Washington, he didn’t know it would lead to a career in the field. “The instructor of the class mentioned an internship that was available,” said Knox. “I expressed interest,...
The end of an emergency is often the beginning of a longer phase of crisis management and business recovery. In today’s post, we’ll talk about seven things you should do after the most acute phase of an emergency is over. Related on MHA...
Cybersecurity risk rating solutions are a polarizing topic for security leaders. We meet promoters and detractors in roughly equal measure in the customers that we speak to. Positive client sentiment cites the ability to continuously monitor their third parties, and...
Data I/O’s SentriX Platform enables IoT OEMs and electronic manufacturers of all sizes to securely provision and personalize IoT devices using NXP EdgeLockTM SE050 Secure Element REDMOND, Wash.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Data I/O Corporation...
FEMA has released Planning Considerations: Evacuation and Shelter-in-Place: Guidance for State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Partners today. The document draws upon the collective experience of those partners to provide relevant concepts, principals, and...
World-class innovation delivery requires weaving together three foundational realities: “Software is eating the world.” Marc Andreessen famously said this in a 2011 essay in The Wall Street Journal. It was true then, and it’s all...
Job Description The Pew Charitable Trusts uses data to make a difference. For more than 70 years, we have focused on serving the public, invigorating civic life, conducting nonpartisan research, advancing effective public policies and practices, and achieving tangible...
Provides Comprehensive Visibility and Early Warning of Threats and Risks to Digital Services Across Any Network, Any Cloud WESTFORD, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC., (NASDAQ: NTCT), a leading provider of service assurance,...
US Signal, today announced general availability of DRaaS for VMware, its new Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solution running on VMware technologies GRAND RAPIDS, MICH. (PRWEB) – US Signal, a leading data center services provider, today...
A complete enterprise storage solution now available via a cost-effective subscription model NEW YORK – StorONE, the innovator behind the S1 storage software platform, today announces the new S1-as-a-Service (S1aaS), a use-based solution integrating...
Scotland’s busiest airport sets new benchmarks for aviation incident management, leveraging Everbridge to improve critical communications and protect passengers, staff and service personnel LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ:...
Dedicated facility and team build on Emerson’s cybersecurity expertise network to help safeguard industrial infrastructure and reduce operational risk PUNE, India–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Emerson (NYSE: EMR), a global technology and engineering...
E2S, the world’s largest independent manufacturer of high performance audible and visible warning devices for life safety applications in commercial, industrial, marine, onshore and offshore safe areas and hazardous locations, has published an all-new version of...
MEMPHIS, Tenn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–ServiceMaster Global Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SERV), a leading provider of essential services to residential and commercial customers in the termite, pest control, cleaning and restoration markets, today announced the...
According to a survey of 179,000 college students, over 72% replied that they are worried about campus safety. College campuses have a responsibility to protect their students from theft and injury, and make them feel as safe as possible. Before the new fall...
A surprisingly large number of executives think that practice of any kind is for grinds and that star performers do things by the seat of their pants. When it comes to crisis management, this approach is a good way to lose your pants and a lot else. Having a strong...
If you believe the stereotypes, then the worlds of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) are very different. In one, ranks of commoditized beige boxes hold institutional memory, critical intellectual property, and the bosses’ email: The...
Cyber security is a big concern for companies with remote staff. Is coworking space the answer? We ask Ran Haer, Regus’ Information Security Manager As the trend for remote working and flexible workspace increases, cyber security is at the forefront of the minds...
To Build An Adaptive Enterprise, Build An Adaptive Workforce The future of work isn’t something that happens to you — it’s something you create for your company and your own career. Unfortunately, C-level technology and business...
INDIANAPOLIS — Scale Computing, a market leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions, today announced that the company is experiencing growing demand for the edge computing and hyperconverged IT solutions delivered by...
The Federal Emergency Management Agency today released the latest National Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA). The National THIRA is the process through which FEMA identifies catastrophic threats and hazards, the consequences of those threats...
FEMA, in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission, will conduct a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2019. The nationwide test will be sent to radio and television stations beginning at 2:20 p.m. EDT. The test is...
ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Otava, a global leader in secure cloud services for enterprise and channel partners, announced today that it has partnered with Atlassian Platinum Services Partner, E7 Solutions, to enable the delivery of fully managed cloud...
Customizable development platform enables easy integration of exclusive weather data HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – Baron, the worldwide provider of critical weather intelligence, announces the launch of the new Baron Weather API for Public Safety website, now optimized for...
As more and more people pursue their passions alongside their regular jobs, flexible workspace solutions are helping to support the shift to a “multi-hyphen” workforce Freelancers, the self-employed, micro business owners, multi-hyphenates, slashies, those...
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – US Signal, a leading data center services provider, today released its 2019 State of Web and DDoS Attacks survey. The study—which included data derived from more than 100 IT decision makers in U.S.-based companies with up to 750...
By OSCAR MUNOZ When a business faces technological disruptions or natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, fires and tornadoes, no one anticipates it. These types of events occur when least expected and can result in either a...
Enables MSPs to Provide Real-Time Requests for Product Features and Enhancements NEW YORK – Atera, developer of the big data-based IT automation platform that combines Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM), Professional Services Automation (PSA),...
Many organizations think that effective business continuity planning is synonymous with great plan documentation. It’s not. Yes, plan documentation is extremely important. BUT… many organizations fail to recognize that effective business continuity plans...
Do you ever wish you could take a quick “pulse check” to see how your compliance education is landing – to identify subject areas that need improved awareness and know with certainty what your people really need? Fresenius’ Mary Shirley offers...
(TNS) — After months of persistent flooding in the metro-east, counties are tabulating the damages and requesting millions of dollars in federal assistance. Thursday marked the last day for Illinois counties to request Public Assistance Reimbursement through the...
By Don Boxley Jr / July 11, 2019 Most consumers regard Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) as a credible means of securing their data transmissions and overall privacy. Few realize VPNs were initially designed to provide these benefits for on-premise settings, offering...
Industry veterans, Jim Caro and Frank Jablonski, Join as SVP of Sales and VP of Marketing to drive global growth SAN MATEO, Calif. – SIOS Technology Corp., the industry pioneer in providing IT Resilience through intelligent application availability, today...
SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning applications are becoming ubiquitous in companies of all sizes, across all industries, and require significant up-front investment in hardware. Along with initial costs, however, come...
JERSEY CITY, NJ – July 22, 2019 – Venture-backed startup Formulus Black today announced it has appointed Mark D. Iwanowski as its new CEO. Iwanowski is both an experienced senior executive of international technology companies, and a veteran of VC in IT,...
Drummer, singer, and guitarist extraordinaire Dave Grohl has been a part of several prolific rock bands such as Nirvana and the Foo Fighters. He recently brought up an interesting view on playing guitar. Grohl’s view on playing music relates much closer to...
The eventuality of a cyber attack is cause for concern for all kinds of organizations, but lately the financial services industry has been especially afflicted. Drawbridge Partners’ Martin Passante explores the growing cybersecurity threat in financial services...
(TNS) — U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Sarah Minson was in the thick of efforts to develop an earthquake warning system in California when a series of major temblors struck the sparsely populated community of Ridgecrest in the Mojave Desert this summer. The...
(TNS) — Beaver County officials plan to improve emergency communication after a series of alerts about last weekend’s chemical release in Rochester left residents scratching their heads. About 27,000 residents received notice of a shelter advisory Friday...
ANDOVER, Mass. (July 18, 2019) – Fairchild Resiliency Systems®, an industry-leading, full-service business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) software firm recently announced the appointment of Mike Spano to the position of Consulting Manager. A...
Most organizations do a good job when it comes to developing plans to protect their staff in the event of an emergency. However, there are several other key tasks that often go overlooked. In today’s post we’ll look at the six tasks that every organization...
At Forrester, it is our goal to be ahead of the market trends so we can advise clients on what is to come and how they should prepare. Each year, we publish a series of predictions reports about what may be of primary concern for various roles over the...
New Orleans averted disaster this month when tropical storm Barry delivered less rain in the Crescent City than forecasters originally feared. But Barry’s slog through Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee and Missouri is just the latest event in a year that...
Sandy Hook, Boston, Las Vegas, Parkland and Pittsburgh. Those locations now have secondary meanings; mass casualty events. Each having their own community impact and recovery process. Response plans are created during the calm and quiet of a work...
(TNS) — Low-interest federal disaster loans are now available to certain private nonprofit organizations in Osage and Nowata counties following President Donald Trump’s federal disaster declaration for Public Assistance as a result of severe storms,...
The CCPA, which goes into effect in six months, will cover data beginning in January 2019, so the time to prepare is now. Aparavi’s CTO Rod Christensen discusses the steps companies must take to ensure compliance as soon as possible. The purpose of...
Innovation isn’t just having a few bright ideas. It’s about creating value and helping organizations continuously adapt and evolve. ISO is developing a new series of International Standards on innovation management, the third of which has just been...
Last week, the United States Conference of Mayors adopted a resolution against paying ransoms. What’s interesting about this is it’s creating what is essentially a vertical front of communities against ransomware. It may well disincentivize attackers...
New solution enforces consistent security and data protection policies across Web, Cloud, and Email MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC), the world’s leading cyber security company, today announced its new...
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) today announced it has been named to the 2019 Disability Equality Index® Best Places to Work by Disability:IN and the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD)....
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has been positioned as a leader in the new IDC MarketScape: EMEA Service Providers for Digital Grid Enablement 2019 Vendor Assessment1. Accenture was recognized for key strengths, including its ability to...
Enterra Enterprise Cognitive System provides Advanced Analytics and Autonomous Sales and Marketing Insights to Nestlé USA NEWTOWN, Pa. & ARLINGTON, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Nestlé USA has signed a multi-year solution-as-a-service...
PARIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Louvre, which hosts more than 10 million visitors annually, is revamping its digital strategy with the help of Accenture (NYSE:ACN). The initiative demonstrates the Louvre’s ongoing commitment to enhance the way it welcomes...
Aternity to be an independent division focused on Digital Experience Management (DEM) Aternity experienced nearly 100%+ Y/Y subscription and SaaS bookings growth in 2018 Riverbed continues market leadership delivering transformative Digital Networking solutions,...
Carbonite Endpoint 360 protects endpoint data across the Microsoft Office 365 Suite, including SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange and Teams BOSTON & LAS VEGAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today at Microsoft Inspire, Carbonite, Inc. (NASDAQ: CARB), a leading...
Expanded capabilities will deliver combination of on-premises performance with cloud’s scalability, security and reduced TCO for unrivaled data protection SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Druva, Inc., the leader in Cloud Data Protection and...
Autonomous Vehicles, Healthcare and Telecom Use Cases Span Large-scale Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Data Pipelines from Edge to Core to Cloud SAN FRANCISCO – SwiftStack, the leader in multi-cloud data storage and management, today announced...
Job Description The Disaster Recovery Analyst is responsible for development, enhancement, maintenance, training and implementation of Stifel’s Disaster Recovery (DR) Program. This position provides support to the Information Technology (IT) organization to...
As flexible working becomes the new normal, how can risk directors feel confident company data is secure? The era of digital transformation is well underway. As new technologies – such as artificial intelligence...
AlertFlorida, powered by Everbridge, now available for all of Florida’s public colleges and universities Florida enters into five-year extension with Everbridge, establishing one of the most comprehensive and coordinated emergency notification programs in the...
Air France KLM Martinair Cargo signs as launch carrier for AFLS Exchange NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has introduced AFLS Exchange, a new cloud-based connectivity and collaboration platform that enables air cargo carriers to...
Interstate Restoration on standby as tropical storm threatens Louisiana FORT WORTH, Texas (July 12, 2019) – In the first significant mobilization of the young 2019 hurricane season, Interstate Restoration is rapidly moving resources into Louisiana with...
In over twenty years in the business, I’ve seen it all in terms of how our clients treat us at MHA as consultants, partners, and people. Most clients are great, but a few have made our lives miserable and have never quite learned how to treat a BCM consultant....
The new California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is shaping up to be the toughest privacy law in the U.S. Nymity’s Chief Global Privacy Strategist, Teresa Troester-Falk, discusses what organizations need to do to adapt to the changing U.S. privacy law landscape....
Urbanization is increasing, placing pressure on resources and infrastructure like never before. There’s no stemming the tide, so city leaders need to build resilience in order to cope. Work on a new International Standard for urban resilience, led by the United...
WOBURN, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Kaspersky has successfully completed the Service Organization Control for Service Organizations (SOC 2) Type 1 audit. The final report, issued by one of the Big Four accounting firms, confirms that the development and...
Do you cloud responsibly? Cloud responsibly means that when you move, manage and use cloud workloads, you’re thinking about data protection. It means an organization is being smart and thoughtful about managing data protection. It means backup, rapid recovery,...
Originally appeared on the DCIG blog. By Jerome M. Wendt As more organizations embrace a cloud-first model, everything in their IT infrastructure comes under scrutiny, to include backup and recovery. A critical examination of this component of their...
When dealing with a crisis, a leader’s role is largely to guide others through it. Good leaders understand that everyone responds to crisis differently and know that they must be prepared for the myriad ways people may react when faced with tragedy. Tragedies...
(TNS) — You’ve been meaning to put together a disaster supplies kit ever since you heard predictions that a Cascadia quake and tsunami would impact most everyone around you. Last week’s record-breaking, back-to-back earthquakes in...
Cyber threats are simply a business reality in the modern age, but with the right knowledge and tools, we can protect our businesses, employees and customers. Davis Malm’s Robert Munnelly outlines five actions companies can take to maximize long-term cyber...
At the professional level, the critical tasks leading to, during and following a disaster involve coordinating multiorganizational, intergovernmental and intersectoral response and recovery operations. In the early 70’s wildfires in California brought the...
With M&A activity on the rise, a commitment to a strong data management program can help businesses to avoid expensive — and often dangerous — compliance and risk aggregation missteps. Kelvin Dickenson of Opus explains. In 2018, there were 375...
(TNS) — Aftershocks from the recent earthquakes near Ridgecrest, Calif., are decreasing in both frequency and magnitude, and seismologists say they expect the pattern to continue. The earthquakes on July 4 and 5 — one a magnitude 6.4 and the...
As we’ve reported prior, the majority of legacy Fortune 500 firms are no longer market leaders because their focus remains on protecting their traditional business in this era of digital transformation. In last month’s midwestern US...
Competency reaffirms SIOS’ deep domain expertise enabling customers to achieve Microsoft Workloads migration and management goals on AWS NEW YORK, NY – SIOS Technology Corp., an industry pioneer in providing IT Resilience through intelligent...
Now available, open source and enterprise edition Alluxio 2.0 adds major capabilities to simplify and accelerate multi-cloud, data-intensive workload adoption and deployment NEW YORK, NY – Alluxio, developer of open source data orchestration...
Social media has redefined the way we communicate daily with family, friends and, in business. Recent crisis responses have documented ways in which social media was utilized to provide information and connect with those impacted to help alleviate the level of anxiety...
A crisis communication plan ensures employees and other key stakeholders receive timely information for their safety. Mass notification technology has improved communication with patients, employees, media, and other stakeholders which enriches morale and boosts...
A commercial vessel suffered a significant malware attack in February, prompting the US Coast Guard to issues an advisory to all shipping companies: Here be malware. In February 2019, a large ship bound for New York City radioed the US Coast Guard warning that...
(TNS) — Glenn Pomeroy, head of the California Earthquake Authority, spent the weekend in Ridgecrest, near the epicenter of Friday’s 7.1-magnitude quake and its day-earlier, 6.4-magnitude baby brother. “Driving around, you could clearly see there had...
Microsoft issued fixes for 77 unique vulnerabilities this Patch Tuesday, including two zero-day privilege escalation vulnerabilities seen exploited in the wild. Microsoft today patched 77 vulnerabilities and issued two advisories as part of its July security...
Has your organization prepared for an insider threat workplace violence scenario? The most recent shootings at the Virginia Beach Municipal Public Works Building and the Earl Cabell Federal Building in Dallas are a stark, yet painful reminder that security leaders and...
Just because your data isn’t on-premises doesn’t mean you’re not responsible for security The cloud certainly offers advantages, but as with any large-scale deployment, the cloud can also offer unforeseen challenges. The concept of the cloud...
Secrets to unlocking growth include smart digital investments, a laser focus on customers and effective ecosystems NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–In today’s era of ever-growing focus on the customer, only a small number of forward-thinking companies...
Over 47 million strikes detected in the United States during the first half of the year by the company’s Total Lightning Network GERMANTOWN, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Earth Networks, operators of the world’s largest lightning detection...
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Otava, a global leader in secure cloud services for enterprise and channel partners, has been chosen by The Hospital Quality Institute (HQI) to create and manage two comprehensive virtual private cloud environments for confidential data. HQI...
Does your organization have a strategy for protecting employees at home as a part of your overall cybersecurity program? Something that could include, but really goes to a place that is beyond, awareness training? If You Answered “No,” You’re Not...
(TNS) — After two mass shootings, it became obvious that the region’s emergency radio system was a failure. The obsolete system imploded both timesand left police officers struggling to communicate as bullet-riddled bodies piled up. Something had to...
Every year businesses temporarily shut down – or close forever – because of a disaster. The 6.4- and 7.1-magnitude earthquakes which struck near Ridgecrest, California late last week are stark reminders of a quake’s ability to disrupt a...
Every company should be expecting a security breach at some point. MetricStream’s Vibhav Agarwal discusses the importance of tackling cybersecurity directly and what risk-focused executives must do to avoid disaster and position their organizations for success....
Consumer connected devices are presenting increasingly attractive targets to cybercriminals, putting home networks and potentially enterprise assets at risk. In just the last two weeks, we’ve seen Samsung indicate that antimalware should be used on its...
Avalution Consulting is excited to announce the acquisition of BC Management. The collective service offering from two industry-leading firms – spanning business continuity consulting, software, staffing, and research – provides a unique and dynamic...
Everbridge’s Award-Winning Critical Event Management Platform Protects Millions of Students, Faculty, and Staff During Critical Events BURLINGTON, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Everbridge, Inc., (NASDAQ: EVBG), the global leader in critical event...
Innovations in cyber protection, AI, machine learning, and blockchain technologies will be the focus of the new research and development office TEMPE, Ariz. & SCHAFFHAUSEN, Switzerland – (BUSINESS WIRE) Acronis, a global leader in cyber...
LONDON – Today, Axcient, a leader in business availability and cloud migration solutions for Managed Service Providers (MSPs), announced an agreement with Zedsphere, a cloud distributor, to provide Axcient’s suite of Business Availability...
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – SwiftStack, the leader in multi-cloud data storage and management, announced today that DC BLOX, a multi-tenant data center provider in the Southeastern U.S., has deployed SwiftStack software to power its own multi-region,...
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Tachyum Inc. announced today that it has finalized a Series-A funding round led by private equity investor IPM Group, with participation of the Slovak Government, that will be used to continue the advancement of the company’s...
SAN JOSE, Calif. and MAYNARD, Mass. /PRNewswire/ – Acacia’s coherent optics technology empowers webscale companies, service providers, and data center operators to meet the fast-growing consumer demands for data Acacia is headquartered in Maynard,...
KOBE, Japan – DriveSavers, the worldwide leader in data recovery, announced today data recovery assistance to those affected by the torrential rains, flooding and landslides on the island of Kyushu in Southwestern Japan. More than 1.09 million residents across...
People in business continuity talk a lot about black swans: unexpected events that come from outside normal experience and have strongly negative effects. Black swan events are definitely worth thinking about and being prepared for due to their potentially...
Emerging technologies are complicating compliance for financial services firms. Smarsh’s Robert Cruz, an expert on information governance and regulatory compliance, shares some of the key the challenges they face, as well as a path forward. For financial firms...
(TNS) – For the second consecutive day, a major earthquake shook Southern California and was felt far beyond, stopping the NBA’s Summer League games in Las Vegas, forcing the evacuation of rides at Disneyland in Anaheim, and reminding residents that the...
This three-part blog addresses some of the human concerns of recovery: Part 1 What: What are Human Concerns Part 2 So What: The Risks Part 3 Now What: The Applications Now What: Applications for Meaning and Resiliency Resiliency doesn’t mean you...
Human vulnerability presents a real threat for organizations. But it’s also a remarkable opportunity to turn employees into our strongest cyber warriors. Employee awareness has become a critical necessity for modern organizational security. While the...
By BRITT LEWIS Senior Vice President, Direct Sales and Business Development, Inmarsat Government Inc. Seeing a disaster unfold on television or online triggers many emotions. It can, on occasions, be very difficult to watch the images being broadcast. Yet to arrive in...
Russian-speaking group has sent thousands of emails containing new malware to individuals working at financial institutions in the US, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore. Russian-speaking threat group TA505 has begun targeting individuals working at financial...
Employers must make clear to their employees what compliance topics and policies are essential to the organization. As Skillsoft’s John Arendes explains, it’s to the employer’s benefit to help employees deal with information overload. The workplace...
A wave of new MacOS malware over the past month includes a zero-day exploit and other attack code. A wave of malware targeting MacOS over the past month has raised the profile of the operating system once advertised as much safer than Windows. The newest attack...
Internal audit must know how to respond when business process owners want to go faster and document less (such as in Agile environments). Nielsen’s Kevin Alvero and Wade Cassels discuss what IA can do to meet these seemingly contradictory goals. In the five...
As nation-states and rogue actors increasingly probe critical infrastructure, policy and technology experts worry that satellite and space systems are on the front lines. Information from satellites fuel a great deal of today’s technology, from the intelligence...
(TNS) — A scholarship of $2,000 for a first responder in eastern North Carolina is available through WGU North Carolina and the N.C. Association of Fire Chiefs. The Eastern North Carolina First Responders Scholarship is available to an emergency medical...
How writing patterns, online activities, and other unintentional identifiers can be used in cyber offense and defense. As we move throughout our digital lives, we unknowingly leave traces — writing styles, cultural references, behavioral signatures...
The emergency management profession has grown and evolved in recent years, and the University of Central Florida’s (UCF) emergency management and homeland security programs have evolved right along with it. The university first began offering a minor in...
Staying ahead can feel impossible, but understanding that perfection is impossible can free you to make decisions about managing risk. Every few years, there is a significant and often unexpected shift in the tactics that online criminals use to exploit us for...
When is the last time your organization conducted a cyber security tabletop exercise? Cyber security teams are busy monitoring and responding to attacks against your organization’s information technology infrastructure. Should you still be conducting tabletop...
WOBURN, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Kaspersky, a global cybersecurity company, and INTERPOL have signed a new five-year agreement to reinforce their collaboration in the fight against cybercrime around the world. This is the second agreement between the two...
Strategic Service Provider’s DRaaS solution named in fifth consecutive report Santa Clara, Calif. and St. Louis, Mo. – InterVision, a leading IT strategic services provider, today announced it has been named a Visionary in the June 2019 Gartner...
When the only certainty is uncertainty, the IEC and ISO ‘risk management toolbox’ helps organizations to keep ahead of threats that could be detrimental to their success. All businesses face threats on an ongoing basis, ranging from unpredictable...
Respondents identify risk remaining due to lagging implementation of DevOps culture DALLAS – (BUSINESS WIRE) Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, today announced results from a recent...
The first-ever PwC’s Global Crisis Survey was released this year with insights into over 4,000 crises that occurred at 2,000 companies. The survey comes at an ideal time as crisis management conversations abound and techniques for mitigation evolve....
Recently, a relative of mine required surgery, which led to my spending long periods of time in a hospital. As a result of that experience, I developed the content of today’s blog: a list of nine ways we can make hospital BCM programs healthier. Related on...
Late on the evening of May 4, 1988, the First Interstate Bancorp building in California caught fire. Luckily, the fire was put out quickly and only two of the employees working at the time were hurt, and their injuries were minor. Looking back, things could have been...
More than 4.5 million American households are at “high or extreme risk from wildfire,” says the Leavitt Group, an insurance brokerage firm. Which states are the most wildfire prone? Topping the list are Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho,...
Could the world’s most congested cities ease commuters’ woes with flexible working? 40% of people cite their commute as the worst part of their day. On public transport, travellers often experience crowded conditions, stress, discomfort, disruption,...
(TNS) – Enid Police Department’s 911 dispatchers are getting more accurate locations for cellphone users calling 911 via the RapidSOS software used in the center.Lt. Warren Wilson said the software is able to pinpoint callers using iPhones with iOS 12+ and...
This blog is a summary of an interesting internal discussion we had among analysts. I’d like to extend my thanks to Jessica Liu, Martha Bennett, Fatemeh Khatibloo, Brigitte Majewski, Sucharita Kodali, and Benjamin Ensor who...
Certification Validates GIGA Meets All Site Requirements to Serve Open Compute Project (OCP) Customers’ Hardware Needs ATLANTA, Ga. — GIGA Data Centers, LLC (GIGA), a new breed of data center provider creating affordable, hyper-scale performing...
FARMINGTON, Conn. – The Trusted Network Accreditation Program (TNAP) collaborative, developed to promote interoperability by assuring the security and privacy of trusted networks, today announced the results of a healthcare industry stakeholder survey.The...
https://www.virtual-corp.com/business-continuity/table-top-exercise-revelations/ By Bob Farkas, PMP, AMBCI, SCRA One of the most useful, insightful, and entertaining business continuity activities is table top exercises. These are generally well known to...
SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Ondas Holdings Inc., (OTCQB: ONDS) through its wholly owned subsidiary, Ondas Networks Inc., a developer of private licensed wireless data networks for mission-critical industrial markets, today announced the closing of its...
Reliable paralleling switchgear ideal for emergency backup power HINGHAM, Mass. – Russelectric, a leading manufacturer of automatic transfer switches and power control systems offers its robust and reliable Emergency Power System which provides backup power...
SAN FRANCISCO – IObit, the world’s leading system utilities and security software provider, today announces the release of its new Software Updater 2, with a 180% larger software database to update more outdated programs and to install Windows...
Unified Virtual Appliance with Seagate Drives Ideal for I/O-Intensive Environments NEW YORK – StorONE today announced record speeds using Seagate SSD drives and StorONE’s TRU™ S1 Software Defined Storage solution. In recent performance...
SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Elastifile, the pioneer of enterprise-grade, scalable file storage for the public cloud, today announced the release of a provider plugin for HashiCorp Terraform supporting Elastifile Cloud File Service, the company’s fully-managed...
In 2019, drones have definitely become an integral part of the public safety landscape and to some, drones are now considered mission critical. Flashing back to 2015, drones had shown some progress but were still mired in strict Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)...
Symantec’s Cloud Security Threat Report (CSTR) finds cloud security exacerbated by immature security practices, overtaxed IT staff and risky end-user behavior 73% of respondents experienced a security incident due to immature security practices 93%...
Updated forecast projects growth at edge and precipitous talent drain COLUMBUS, Ohio – Five years ago, Vertiv led a global, industry-wide examination of the data center of the future.Data Center 2025: Exploring the Possibilities, stretched the...
Shell is the first major brand to enable its networks for fuel dispensers using Cybera technology — addressing the need for higher security and outdoor payment system compliance NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Cybera, the leader in SD-WAN application and...
Sabey achieves Gold-level standing in the national Green Lease Leader program sponsored by The Institute for Market Transformation and the U.S. Department of Energy SEATTLE – Seattle-based Sabey Data Center Properties announced today that the company...
Job Description The Business Continuity Planning (BCP) Manager assists with the development and implementation of Healthfirst Management Services (HFMS) emergency management policy under the direction of the Business Continuity Director. The incumbent ensures the...
Archived data great for training and planning By Glen Denny, Baron Services, Inc. Historical weather conditions can be used for a variety of purposes, including simulation exercises for staff training; proactive emergency weather planning; and proving (or disproving)...
Facility Uses Innovative WindChill™ Modular Enclosure to Dramatically Lower Costs for AI, Financial, Healthcare, High-Performance Computing & Other Compute Needs Atlanta, Ga. — GIGA Data Centers, LLC (GIGA),a new breed of data center provider...
Many businesses are embarking on digital transformation initiatives that will put technology at the core of business value creation. At the same time, many of these same businesses are seeking to reduce or eliminate the cost of managing IT infrastructure. Storage...
(TNS) — In a state where rising sea levels are threatening oceanfront property, building $20 billion worth of seawalls would protect South Carolina’s coast from the effects of climate change during the next 20 years, a new study says. The report by the...
The traditional ‘Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape’ (D2D2T) backup model is no longer adequate for always-on enterprises requiring rapid restore data and is being replaced by Flash-to-Flash-to-Cloud (F2F2C) says Peter Gadd… In a D2D2T model, the primary disk...
While cybersecurity discussions have permeated board meetings, the democratization of accountability has a long way to go. A spate of recent surveys offer indications that the philosophy that "cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility" is...
While for many organizations major incidents are relatively rare events, when they occur they create personal as well as organizational resilience challenges. Dominic Irvine looks at how using the power of imagination can help… Being resilient means being able...
SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Ondas Holdings Inc., (OTCQB: ONDS) through its wholly owned subsidiary, Ondas Networks Inc., a developer of private licensed wireless data networks for mission-critical industrial markets, today announced that it has...
Regions of the US have been hit hard in recent weeks with damaging tornadoes and floodwaters In recent years, over $6.7 billion in damages have been incurred from tornadoes, and this year has been no different. So what can your organization do to...
It’s important for business continuity professionals to be knowledgeable about the ways being unprepared for disruptions can harm their organization. How else are they going to make the case to senior management that building a good continuity program is worth...
When Hurricane Irma threatened Hillsborough County, Fla., in 2017, emergency management staff into overdrive to prepare for the eventual Category 5 storm. Luckily for Hillsborough, the brunt of the storm missed the county. But the feeling was that had it hit, the...
How a security researcher learned organizations willingly hand over sensitive data with little to no identity verification. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has a provision called "Right of Access," which states...
Owning a small business has many rewards, like freedom, independence and the chance to financially benefit from your own hard work. But there are also major challenges, like long hours, hungry competitors, and cash-flow problems. One of the challenges that lands...
In our ‘throw away’ society, the linear model of make, use and discard is depleting the resources of our planet – and our pockets. The solution is a circular economy, where nothing is wasted, rather it gets reused or transformed. While standards...
New global research from Morrison & Foerster reveals that GCs want to be evaluated on how effectively they protect their companies from risk and reputational damage. As Paul Friedman explains, they’ll have plenty of opportunity to prove themselves. As...
Effective disaster response requires expertise across a wide range of sectors. How various sectors interact and exchange information can be critical to a positive outcome. Often, each sector having operated within its own domain, has limited visibility into other...
(TNS) – About 80 firefighters tested their emergency preparedness skills in Montour County during a drill on Tuesday evening.Crews responded to scenarios where tornados struck Emmanuel Nursing Home and Maria Joseph Manor within minutes of each other Tuesday...
Business leaders in the financial services (FS) industry are used to tracking success with measures that reflect shareholder, investor, and market regulator values such as return on equity, net profit, assets under management, and capital adequacy ratio. This is the...
By its very definition, emergency management is a field that deals constantly with challenges. Back in 2005, we co-authored an article that examined some specific “critical obstacles” facing emergency managers at the time, including: an imbalance of focus...
In a wide-ranging article, Geary W. Sikich enters the debate about the future of the risk assessment and the business impact analysis and pulls various threads together to conclude that targeted flexibility is the basis of the art of being prepared. Some...
Disaster recovery is an important process within business continuity management (BCM) that focuses on developing a plan of action to recover from a potential internal or external business threat. In other words, disaster recovery is about ensuring that the business...
Do we understand how to avoid the risk of our devices being compromised? For most of us, our mobile phones are an extension of ourselves. Our daily routine, interests, personality and vital information are all stored on devices that we take with us on-the-go to assist...
The investment enables rapid global expansion and continued innovation of the industry’s first and most complete data protection technology built for the cloud SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Druva, Inc., the leader in Cloud Data Protection and...
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Alluxio, developer of open source data orchestration technology for the cloud used by seven of the world’s top 10 Internet companies, today announced at Presto Summit it has collaborated with Starburst Data, the Presto company,...
FARMINGTON, Conn. – The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC), a non-profit standards development organization and accrediting body for organizations that electronically exchange healthcare data, announced today...
Company gives customers the freedom to choose any cloud with one experience SUNNYVALE, Calif. – (BUSINESS WIRE) NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP), the data authority for hybrid cloud, today announced new solutions and services that allow customers to adopt and...
What does “Digital Transformation” really mean for companies in 2019? Since the dawn of the computer age, organizations have been asking themselves how they can keep up with the times. From an innovation point of view, Digital Transformation at its core is...
On May 29, 2019, I performed a Google search for the words “Business Risk Management Approach” in news headlines. I got close to 5,000 results from just the previous 24 hours. I am sure I would get a similar number of results no matter when I...
Many corporate leaders are hesitant to move to the cloud because of security concerns. netlogx’s Clayton Calvert explains that while data breaches are continuing apace, cloud security is entirely possible and manageable. Cloud adoption has continued to grow in...
(TNS) — Officials want to know why dozens of campers were left soaked and stranded after the electronic door locks on a $1 million tornado shelter failed to unlock during an actual tornado warning. The reinforced concrete of the new dome-shaped shelter at...
Agency urges organizations with vulnerable systems to apply mitigations immediately. Time may be running out for organizations that have still not applied the patches that Microsoft released last month for the "BlueKeep" Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)...
June weather in New York City can be fickle. As the I.I.I.’s own Brent Carris reported, this fickleness can lead to chaos for the city’s outdoor music festivals, like the recent fiasco at this year’s Gov Ball. Carris noted that event organizers...
“There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs.” ~ Bit of wisdom on stairway outside a high-intensity gym Life ain’t easy. Neither is a job. That’s why they call it work. It’s true of every aspect of personal life and...
Exabeam has released its annual ‘State of the SOC’ report, identifying shifting roles and responsibilities as one of the most pressing challenges for security operations centre / center (SOC) managers. As an example of this shift, C-suite executives are...
Former BASELAYER and IO Data Centers Executive David Shepard Joins GIGA Data Centers as Chief Revenue Officer ATLANTA, Ga. — GIGA Data Centers is pleased to announce the appointment of David Shepard as Chief Revenue Officer. David is responsible...
Enables Developers and Network Admins to Support What Work Looks Like Today – IoT, Edge Computing, Cloud and Multi-Cloud – Without the Need for a VPN FORT COLLINS, Colo. – DH2i®, the leading provider of multi-platform Software Defined...
Returns on investment vary across jurisdictions and hazard type Every federal grant dollar spent on natural disaster mitigation projects, such as elevating buildings or retrofitting infrastructure to reduce the impact of future events, saves $6 on average in post...
‘We are particularly honored to have ServiceNow implement MaestroRS because ServiceNow provides the platform and ecosystem in which we operate,’ Aaron Callaway, managing director, Fairchild Resiliency Systems tells CRN. ‘ServiceNow recognizes the...
(TNS) — Laurie Futch has never put in a flood insurance claim in the 33 years she’s lived in her Island Street home, but she pays about $900 a year for a policy that only insures the $32,000 she still owes on her mortgage. Kevin Mann, also of Island...
Hanzo’s Jim Murphy explores the danger of Slack data; voluminous, informal, unstructured and context-dependent, it’s a threat hiding in plain sight at thousands of organizations, and often it’s only in the course of an investigation or e-discovery...
Gone are the days when the workplace was built around a fairly straightforward structure, consisting of employer, employee, customer. The winds of technological change may be sweeping away traditional models, but ISO 27501 is helping managers build a more...
Paying Ransom Can Be A Valid Recovery Option Based On Business Need And Circumstances Why Read This Report Conventional wisdom says that when your company suffers a ransomware attack, you should never pay the ransom. But hardline conversations about whether to...
Researchers at the Workshop on the Economics of Information Security highlight the cost savings of sharing cybersecurity data and push for greater access to information on breaches, attacks, and incidents. Good data on attacker tactics, security incidents, and...
On June 11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) published data covering more than 2 million flood insurance claim records going back to 1978 on its OpenFEMA website. This is a giant leap towards helping scientists, policy-makers, and the public...
The meeting of the Emergency Committee convened by the WHO Director-General under the International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005) regarding Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) took place on Friday, 14 June 2019, from 12:00 to 17:00...
New research identifies simplified access to technology as missing piece of puzzle; companies that put it in place can drive greater engagement, productivity and business results FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–It used to be that competitive...
Partnership with VIVOTEK brings superior security to IP cameras DALLAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, today announced it has blocked 5 million attempted...
BURLINGTON, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ:EVBG), the global leader in critical event management, today announced that it has been awarded a multi-year contract to support the deployment of Australia’s next-generation national...
A hidden weakness in many organizations is that business continuity data is kept in different places, which causes confusion and can hinder access during an emergency. In today’s post, we’ll take a look at some of the issues surrounding these so-called...
Using cloud storage often represents the first way that most companies adopt the cloud. They leverage cloud storage to archive their data, as a backup target, share files, or for long term data retention. These approaches offer a low risk means for companies to get...
With more than 90% of Millennials saying flexible working is important to them, firms that don’t trust their staff to do so responsibly risk alienating existing workers and deterring potential new ones The world of work has undergone a seismic shift in...
No organization can prioritize and mitigate hundreds of risks effectively. The secret lies in carefully filtering out the risks, policies, and processes that waste precious time and resources. In security, what we don’t look at, don’t listen to,...
Healthcare organizations (HCOs), once cloud laggards, are embracing public and private cloud services to address a wide range of business problems. A recent survey revealed that 76 percent of HCOs anticipate using public cloud services within the year, putting public...
The development follows speculation and concern among security experts that the attack group would expand its scope to the power grid. The attackers behind the epic Triton/Trisis attack that in 2017 targeted and shut down a physical safety...
Russ Berland considers disruptive risks – like the earthquake and resulting tsunami that caused the Fukushima disaster in 2011 – and how AI can help to identify and manage those risks before they mature into overwhelming obstacles. In March 2011, an 8.9...
New analysis shows widespread DNS protection could save organizations as much as $200 billion in losses every year. DNS protection could prevent approximately one-third of the total losses due to cybercrime – which translates into billions of...
(TNS) — An uptick in the frequency of severe weather is a sure sign that summer is near. And for the Southeast, that means hurricane season is quickly approaching. Last year, two major hurricanes — Florence and Michael – caused significant damage in...
Belgium’s Asco has shut down manufacturing around the world, including the US, in response to a major cybersecurity event, but what happened isn’t clear. A cyberattack has shut down international production at Asco, a company in Zaventem, Belgium,...
Recent research from Fenergo reveals that banks’ C-suite executives overwhelmingly agree: Underinvestment in technology negatively impacts client onboarding and retention – yet a large percentage have not invested in solutions that would help....
Cutting back on the number of security tools you’re using can save money and leave you safer. Here’s how to get started. Industry reports vary, but experts estimate that the modern CISO uses somewhere between 55 and 75 discrete security products....
Accenture is #1 in Google AI Services, According to HFS Research (Photo: Business Wire) NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has been ranked number one in the HFS Research Top Ten Report for Google AI Services 2019, which assessed and...
Everbridge is only U.S.-based emergency notification provider to obtain C5 accreditation for cloud operations BURLINGTON, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ: EVBG), the global leader in critical event management and enterprise...
There are hundreds of thousands of goods and passenger lifts in use at any given moment around the world, safely transporting us up and down buildings thanks to some pretty rigorous standards. But the national or regional rules and regulations that apply to them are...
(TNS) — If there’s a safety threat at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, there’s now multiple ways for officials to warn visitors of the danger and to tell them what to do. Passengers and other visitors will also be able to reach out...
This article by Dave Bermingham provides some practical guidance to help system and database administrators tasked with creating business continuity and disaster recovery plans. For those administrators who hate to plan, General George Patton offers this advice:...
Organizations can’t just rely on diverse and cutting-edge technologies to fight adversaries. They will also need people with diverse expertise and backgrounds. A number of converging factors are changing enterprise cybersecurity, and as a result, we must...
New situational awareness and alerting app helps organizations initiate and comply with weather safety policies GERMANTOWN, Md. – (BUSINESS WIRE) Weather safety leader Earth Networks today announced the launch of Sferic Connect, a new...
State and local agencies can now quickly and cost-effectively purchase technology and services that enable them to engage employees and better serve the public FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – (BUSINESS WIRE) Purchasing can be a frustrating and challenging...
Riverbed combines world-class expertise, support and services, and leadership in digital performance with Versa Network’s award-winning enterprise-class technology, providing a complete and powerful family of next-gen networking solutions for global...
The prestigious award recognizes vision, outstanding leadership and community involvement SUNNYVALE, Calif. – (BUSINESS WIRE) Druva, Inc., the leader in cloud data protection and management, today announced that Jaspreet Singh, founder and CEO,...
Service providers gain increased efficiency and accessibility through new and expanding integrations SCHAFFHAUSEN, Switzerland – (BUSINESS WIRE) Acronis, a global leader in cyber protection, announced today at IT Nation Explore,...
Cloud responsibly means that when you move, manage and use cloud workloads, you’re thinking about data protection. It means an organization is being smart and thoughtful about managing data protection. It means backup, rapid recovery, search and availability of...
When it comes to protecting the electrical grid from sophisticated and constantly evolving cyber and physical attacks, the government and private sector are converging to protect the grid from emerging threats. The effort to secure critical infrastructure has been...
Advances in data science are making it possible to shift vulnerability management from a reactive to a proactive discipline Keeping pace with the endless deluge of security vulnerabilities has become one of the truly Sisyphean tasks for enterprise IT...
As they relate to IT, the functions of business continuity and information security have one common goal. That is to minimize the losses and maximize the uptime of the organization’s information systems before, during, and after an emergency situation. Business...
(TNS) — The era of available electricity whenever and wherever needed is officially over in wildfire-plagued California. Pacific Gas & Electric served stark notice of that “new normal” this past weekend when it pre-emptively shut...
Criminals are using TLS certificates to convince users that fraudulent sites are worthy of their trust One of the most common mechanisms used to secure web browser sessions — and to assure consumers that their transactions are secure — is also being...
A critical component to a holistic approach to cybersecurity is conducting a penetration test, or pen test, to evaluate computer system, network, or web application vulnerabilities that could be exploited by a hacker. The first question to consider when you conduct a...
SAN FRANCISCO – SwiftStack, the leader in multi-cloud data storage and management, today announced a new solution for big data analytics and machine learning for hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments. The solution is built for data-driven workloads...
ORLANDO, Fla. – Avaya Holdings Corp. (NYSE: AVYA) today announced unprecedented, life-saving device location discovery capabilities are now available to emergency first-responders through the integration between RapidSOS, 911 Secure and Avaya emergency...
Group brought together industry stakeholders to produce and disseminate the Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices: Managing Threats and Protecting Patients (HICP) resource FARMINGTON, Conn. – The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation...
We’ve recently seen severe weather conditions worsen in America with the intensity of hurricanes increasing by 10 percent last year, and the frequency of tornadoes quadrupling. Recently, California suffered an alarming 7.1 magnitude earthquake. These extreme weather...
HANOVER, Mass. – Lapels Dry Cleaning, an innovative, environmentally friendly dry cleaning company headquartered in Hanover, Massachusetts, recently expanded its restoration clothing services department to better serve disaster restoration specialists,...
Security should be a high priority for every organization. Unfortunately, there is a serious shortage of quality cybersecurity staffers on the market. Who’s overseeing your organization’s security? Are they equipped to secure your...
SAN DIEGO – News summary:- Unifying the collaboration portfolio to make life easier for users and IT alike- Jabber to mirror Webex Teams by summer’s end- Originally available for Webex Meetings, the AI-driven People Insights will be available...
Revolutionary unified management system embraces Open Source economics to reduce TCO and simplify operations SAN JOSE, Calif. – iXsystems® has released TrueCommand™ 1.0, a unified management system that allows organizations to monitor...
Cyber Special Ops, LLC Revolutionizes Delivery of Pre- and Post-Breach Support ATLANTA – Cyber Special Ops, LLC, an innovative provider of cyber risk management services, has announced a revolutionary new delivery model for cyber services called Concierge...
On May 28, 2019, eighteen confirmed tornadoes pummeled Ohio. The Dayton-area was devastated by fourteen of these tornadoes ranging from EF0 – EF4. To put it in perspective, the state’s annual average number of tornadoes is nineteen. In...
The Benefits Of Design Thinking Are Quantifiable, And They’re Compelling By Ryan Hart (principal analyst, CX) and Benjamin Brown (senior consultant, Total Economic Impact) Design thinking has historically enjoyed “blind support” among executive...
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) are essential to the success of any business continuity program. With a wide range of potential business interruptions, RTO and RPO are two of the most critical factors of a disaster recovery or data...
Free and fair elections thanks to well defined and managed electoral services are at the heart of a democratic political system, and casting a vote is a basic political right. Having robust systems in place is essential for this to run smoothly. Newly revised...
(TNS) – The Pennsylvania Statewide Radio Network (PA-STARNet) is the Commonwealth’s closed wireless voice and data network for local, state, and federal public safety entities."Since July 1, 2012, it has been the responsibility of the Pennsylvania...
A new report sheds light on how human cognitive biases affect cybersecurity decisions and business outcomes. It’s a scenario commonly seen in today’s businesses: executives read headlines of major breaches by foreign adversaries out to pilfer...
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been in effect for more than a year now, and it has already yielded significant returns, but there are still key issues that need work. Fortinet’s Jonathan Nguyen-Duy discusses. Abuse of individuals’...
(TNS) – The storms across the Dallas area Sunday afternoon that killed one and injured at least five others also spread debris through damaged neighborhoods and left several hundred thousand residents without power.Winds were strong enough — up to about 70...
Data should never have been on subcontractor’s servers, says Customs and Border Protection. Photos used by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in an effort to protect travelers have been taken in an attack against a federal subcontractor. Officials...
In our evermore complex, interconnected world, with health systems undergoing new challenges and stresses, risk management in the healthcare industry has never been more important. Three ISO standards play a significant role in matching clinical quality with...
(TNS) — With temperatures soaring and strong winds blowing through forests across Northern California over the weekend, rural areas in the Sierra Nevada foothills plunged into darkness after Pacific Gas & Electric Co. shut off high-voltage transmission lines...
Company prepares to disrupt $55 billion data management industry with a rapidly growing customer base and expanded international presence SUNNYVALE, Calif. – (BUSINESS WIRE) Druva, Inc., the leader in cloud data protection and management, today...
Company creates superior digital experience that empowers employees, fuels innovation and results FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – (BUSINESS WIRE) Work is more mobile than ever. Many of us start our days by scanning news on tablets and continue checking...
ExaGrid Chosen for Its Superior Performance, Scalability, and Data Deduplication MARLBOROUGH, Mass. – (BUSINESS WIRE) ExaGrid®, a leading provider of intelligent hyperconverged storage for backup, today announced...
Solution enables customers building cloud computing solutions to easily set up a security environment when using the DOCOMO Cloud Platform DALLAS – Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global leader in cybersecurity...
FEMA’s National Integration Center released two Job Titles/Position Qualifications and Resource Typing Definitions documents today related to the Environmental Response/Health and Safety core capability of the National Preparedness Goal: Hazardous Materials...
Bringing software skills and software practices to networking and IT with Cisco Certifications and DevNet SAN DIEGO – News Summary: – Evolution of Cisco’s professional certification program embraces both the network professional and...
SAN DIEGO – News Summary: Cisco is extending intent-based networking to some of the most challenging work environments on Earth; from chemical plants and oil refineries, to mines. Unveiling ruggedized industrial switches, access points and routers designed...
Vertiv™ Liebert® GXT5 boosts power and efficiency, enhancing the small space segment of the premium UPS channel portfolio in North America COLUMBUS, Ohio – Vertiv today introduced the Vertiv™ Liebert® GXT5, a technology update to...
Social media has redefined the way we communicate daily with family, friends and, in business. Recent crisis responses have documented ways in which social media was utilized to provide information and connect with those impacted to help alleviate the level of anxiety...
(TNS) — Police and fire chiefs in Broward County are recommending the county give up control of its emergency radio communications system because they don’t think it’s capable of fixing the broken system that impeded the response to the Parkland...
If your company truly is a great place to work, make sure your help-wanted ads steer clear of these common job-listing cliches. If you’ve ever bought a house or participated in online dating, you may be familiar with the creative ways...
(TNS) — When Rodney Andreasen first emerged from the wreckage of Hurricane Michael last October, the Jackson County emergency management director realized nearly everything he knew was gone. The log cabin home he had intended to retire to was lost. The roads in...
The summer season doesn’t always promise nonchalant days filled with sunny afternoons and fun outdoor festivities. It’s easy to forget about triple-digit temperatures, whipping thunderstorms, and wildfires. During summer months, Mother Nature can...
In business continuity, there is a gap between perception and reality in terms of what kinds of problems cause most of the disruptions. In today’s post, we’ll look at BC’s Big Four: the four actual, real-life problems that happen most often and cause...
An overview of three common organizational structures illustrates how NOT to pit chief security and IT execs against each other. For certain critical IT deliverables, CIOs and CISOs embody the inherent tension between cybersecurity and operational requirements....
The Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County rolls out Everbridge’s Critical Event Management platform to its nearly 700,000 residents BURLINGTON, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ: EVBG), the global leader in...
NETSCOUT Donating Arbor Edge Defense Software and Hardware to IT Department WESTFORD, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC., (NASDAQ: NTCT), a leading provider of service assurance, security, and business analytics, announced today that it is...
EFFERSON, Iowa – (BUSINESS WIRE) Accenture (NYSE:ACN) and Corteva Agriscience (NYSE:CTVA) announced today during a press conference with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, a collaboration bringing together non-profit groups, higher education organizations, and...
National Hockey League team simplifies Office 365 backup, dramatically cuts costs and IT time SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Druva, Inc., the leader in cloud data protection and management, today announced the San Jose Sharks has...
Louise McEvoy, head of US Channel Sales, named to prestigious CRN list DALLAS – (BUSINESS WIRE) Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, today announced that its head of Channel Sales...
NetApp debuts new channel-led AFF C190 entry-level all-flash storage (Photo: Business Wire) SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP), the data authority for hybrid cloud, today reinforced the company’s commitment to the channel with the...
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) announced that earlier today its Board of Directors declared a quarterly dividend of $0.35 per common share to be paid on July 24, 2019 to all shareholders of record as of the close of business on July 5, 2019....
Revolutionary New Model Defining Optimal Readiness for Security Leaders in the Digital Age NEW YORK – (Newswire.com) Groupdolists, creator of the most advanced incident response platform for synchronizing and directing readiness and...
HIPPA Compliant Cloud Keeps ePHI Safe to Best Support Patients ANN ARBOR, Mich. – (BUSINESS WIRE) Otava, a leader in secure, compliant hybrid cloud services, is pleased to announce that a national healthcare organization is leveraging its HIPPA...
(TNS) — When every second counted, school resource officer Scot Peterson, who was the closest person to the gunman during the Parkland school shooting and likely the only one who could have intervened, took cover instead of action and for that he has been...
Containers are a very big deal in enterprise computing right now. If your organization isn’t already using them, then trends indicate it probably will soon. This application virtualization technology has had profound implications for some companies that have...
Nearly half of compliance and procurement professionals find it difficult to identify environmental, social and governance within customer due diligence processes. Brian Alster discusses this and other findings from a recent Dun & Bradstreet survey. There is...
In the Fourth Annual Healthcare Ready national survey on the emergency preparedness of Americans, a larger number of respondents indicated a concern that they are vulnerable to a disaster, and yet 51 percent said they didn’t have a plan for a disaster. Of the...
Retail and Financial Services Technology Leader to Leverage Everbridge to Enhance Situational Awareness and Enterprise Critical Communications to Distributed Global Workforce BURLINGTON, Mass. – (BUSINESS WIRE) Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ:EVBG),...
New Strategic Directions Report reflects critical role of data and planning in water infrastructure systems New Black & Veatch Water Report dives into the current landscape of water (Graphic: Business Wire) OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – (BUSINESS WIRE)...
MCLEAN, Va. – (BUSINESS WIRE) Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE:BAH) announced today that its Digital Solutions organization was appraised at Capability Maturity Model for Services (CMMI-SVC) ML5 while maintaining its Capability Maturity Model Integration for...
Global cybersecurity company, Kaspersky Lab becomes Kaspersky, with a mission focused on “Building a safer world” The new Kaspersky branding reflects the evolution of our business focus from “cybersecurity” towards the wider concept of...
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and FEMA announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to streamline coordination between FEMA and the EPA-funded State Revolving Fund (SRF) programs. Now, the funding used to restore vital water...
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – US Signal, a leading data center services provider, today confirmed that, following an approval meeting with the Van Buren Township Planning Commission and receipt of the official building permit from the township’s director...
(TNS) — Three of the twisters that ripped through the region on Memorial Day night left 631 homes in Montgomery County communities unlivable, according to a preliminary Ohio Emergency Management Agency assessment released today. Tornadoes destroyed 211 homes and...
Employers can solve the skills gap by first recognizing that there isn’t an archetypal "cybersecurity job" in the same way that there isn’t an archetypal "automotive job." Here’s how. It feels like every day,...
In this fourth installment on D&O liability from Fox Rothschild’s Stephanie Resnick and John Fuller, the authors explore the importance of having a diverse board to address the challenges posed by various social issues. Why Is Diversity Important? As...
(TNS) — You bought batteries, found the flashlights and stockpiled sandbags. You’re not ready yet, though. The region’s top emergency preparedness experts shared their tips, tricks and a few of the more unusual items on their shopping lists this year...
DENVER – (BUSINESS WIRE) While industries are being completely reinvented at an ever-accelerating pace, the overall approach to cybersecurity has not similarly evolved to address the new security challenges presented by rapid digital transformation. Talent...
The 2019 Veeam Cloud Data Management Report indicates that 73% of organizations are failing to meet users’ demands for uninterrupted access to applications and data; many companies are now looking to embrace Cloud Data Management to better meet protection needs...
16TB Exos® X16 Hard Drive Provides Solution for High Density Storage Supporting Accelerated Hyperscale Demand and IronWolf 16TB Delivers Highest Capacity for NAS CUPERTINO, Calif. – (BUSINESS WIRE) Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX), a world...
Joint development in further advancing performance-based SSDs with integration of Violin advanced technologies SAN JOSE, Calif. – Violin® Systems LLC and Phison Electronics Corporation todayE12DC controller with Violin’s industry-leading...
Accenture came out as a clear leader in latest HFS report on manufacturing service providers NEW YORK – (BUSINESS WIRE) Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has been ranked No. 1 of 16 providers in the HFS Top 10 Manufacturing Service Providers 2019 report....
Arcserve Replication and High Availability shifts the paradigm from application recovery times to application availability so businesses remain fully operational during unplanned disruptions New release adds full system high availability for Linux, extends its full...
(Adapted from A Manager’s Guide to Suicide Postvention in the Workplace: 10 Action Steps for Dealing with the Aftermath of a Suicide) Death powerfully jars our concept of the way life is supposed to be. That dissonance is multiplied when the death is by...
Any business serious about building a successful future needs to meet its employees’ demands for flexibility The fact that the work landscape is evolving at a rate of knots won’t have escaped your notice. The very idea that we should work 9 to 6,...
Picture this scenario: Your company is busier than it has ever been. Product is moving out the door, customers are happy, and your hiring rate is at its highest in company history. Then – suddenly – the bottom falls out. A tornado blowing through Texas...
People need reminding more than they need instruction. Compliance training expert Ronnie Feldman stresses that instruction isn’t enough. Think like an ad man to influence workplace behavior and corporate culture. A very wise and important person once said,...
The 2019 edition of the American National Standard, “NFPA 1600 Standard on Continuity, Emergency, and Crisis Management” has been published by the USA-based National Fire Protection Association. This standard, which is the most mature standard of its kind...
As defined by the online encyclopedia Britannica, an island is “any area of land smaller than a continent and entirely surrounded by water.” When you live on an island, most of your life is constrained within the geographical boundaries of the territory, which...
With the rise of digitization, the media and entertainment (M&E) industry is managing enormous amounts and types of data that it never has before. In addition to media content, which is certainly the lifeblood of the M&E industry, it also has massive amounts...
With major data breaches like Marriott’s making headlines and Facebook’s data privacy scandals shaking consumer confidence, data protection should be at the top of every business’s priority list. The cost of a data breach or data privacy violation is not cheap either,...
Given the financial and reputational threats of unplanned data center outages, cloud-based disaster recovery (DR) is an approach that can minimize friction and ensure innovation scalability. It is time for CIOs to reimagine how they deploy IT staff from a reactive...
In 2016, I went to see the doctor about a headache I could not shake. After a CT scan, I was in the car on my way home when the doctor called and told me to go to the nearest ER. I did, and within two days I was being wheeled into surgery for a two-inch tumor on my...
A concept called adaptive business continuity was first introduced to readers in the Spring 2019 issue of Disaster Recovery Journal. That article explained adaptive business continuity (or merely “adaptive” from this point forward) and its 10 principles. This time...
Caryn Helmandollar is group head of risk management for Ferguson plc (the world’s leading specialist distributor of plumbing and heating products) and oversees enterprise risk, claims, insurance, product integrity, and security. A graduate of James Madison University,...
We have helped to build, manage, and improve hundreds of business continuity programs across just about every industry and organization size. Effective engagement with key stakeholders throughout the organization tends to be one of the most important attributes of...
To realize greater levels of success, businesses have become more specialized, concentrating on what they do best to achieve better margins. The more specialized the business, the more they must rely on the use of third-party vendors to bring their products to market....
Disaster planning and recovery are often viewed as the need for backup systems to safeguard an organization’s data. Here’s a little hint for the survival of your company … it’s not just about the data. The IT and data elements of disaster preparedness are...
Are you able to describe the specific skills and skill levels of each member of your BCM team from a professional and personal perspective? Could you say who on your team has the strongest overall skillset? Do you have a clear idea of who on your staff has the skills...
I remember my first business continuity gig very well. Back in 1997, there was an art to creating a good old-fashioned call tree. Should you follow the org chart? What happens if one person has too many calls to make? What happens if Person A isn’t reached? Who calls...
Over the past few years, businesses have increasingly turned to cloud, mobile, IoT, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and other new technologies to digitally transform the way they create and deliver value. This digital transformation has made it...
ORLANDO, Fla. – It was the most successful conference in years. The four-day DRJ Spring 2019 event featured 65 sessions and 85 speakers, 80 exhibitor booths, and countless networking opportunities. More than 900 attendees pushed the total over 1,000 participants...
Recent tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires and tsunamis have refocused attention on disaster recovery among business leaders and IT managers. While the broader scale of disaster recovery planning includes facilities, power, cooling, communications and people,...
Forrester Research and the Disaster Recovery Journal have partnered to field a number of market studies in IT disaster recovery (DR), business continuity (BC), and overall enterprise risk management in order to gather data for company comparison and benchmarking, to...
Al Davis is currently the chief risk officer at Nelnet, a public company with more than $23 billion in assets. He has 30 years of risk management, compliance, information security, business development, financial analysis, debt financing, credit underwriting,...
If you have been in the business continuity profession for any length of time, then you are certainly familiar with the laundry list of standards that already exist. This includes BCI’s Good Practice Guidelines, ISO 22301, and NFPA 1600, to name a few. If you...
Karma is the concept of an “action” or “deed” which fuels the entire cycle of cause and effect. As a leader, you and your corporation help communities. Acting and responding in an ethical and moral manner is building up a positive corporate Karma – either knowingly or...
An Argument for Relationship-Building to Build Business Continuity Programs People have a hard time imagining what could happen when it has not yet happened. Imagining and working on a plan to recover from a possible disruption that has not happened...
As the saying goes, “It doesn’t matter what road you take if you don’t know where you are going.” For many business continuity management (BCM) programs, not knowing the destination is the norm rather than the exception. The BCM staff at many...
To Achieve the Right Level of Resiliency We’ve helped to build and run hundreds of high-performing business continuity programs. One of the most consistent themes we’ve noticed is a lack of engagement and enthusiasm within an organization prevents even the...
Actions That Can Save Your Organization’s Reputation Today’s 24-hour demand for real and fake news has changed the way you do business. Small mistakes can quickly escalate in reputation-damaging crises. Preventing or repairing them ultimately rests with board members,...
What a ridiculous title – “The Queen of Doom.” But that was my unofficial designation when I worked for the largest insurance broker in the world some 20 odd years ago. My peers and direct reports gave it to me. I realize it must have seemed that way to them at the...
I’ve had the pleasure of being the chair of the Disaster Recovery Journal Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) for the past two years. This is the second time I have been nominated to hold the EAB chair position which demonstrates my commitment to working with other...
The new year is in full swing. With this first issue of Disaster Recovery Journal for 2019, I want to share a few things that are currently at the top of my priority list. Cyber Criminals Hacking, malware, social engineering, credential compromising, web attacks....
Every enterprise confronts data backup challenges, and it is a problem that has become an essential one to address, requiring regular time and resources. Data backup can be complicated because data is often generated and stored in multiple formats and locations....
Developing a high-performance BCM program for your organization starts with you. As the BCM leader, you are the person responsible for the fate and direction of your program. The program’s success depends on your ability to strategically and tactically guide...
Here Are 5 Steps To Follow Any business owner has considered the possibility of a cyberattack, but this does not mean that they are prepared for the reality of one occurring. In fact, 87 percent of small business owners stated not actually feeling at risk of this...
Understanding and Mitigating Business, Operational Risks The unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) market is becoming one of the fastest growing markets in the world. According to Dedrone’s 2017 “Drone Security Insights Report,” commercial,...
Through the veil of chaos, the disaster recovery manager sees a blank canvas, replete with the clarity of success. I heard a comment recently where someone said, “Disaster recovery is going away.” I found the comment odd for a few reasons. Because...
This article is intended to provide a high-level overview of how to conduct full and announced IT business continuity exercise. This overview specifically helps in coordinating a disaster recovery plan (DRP) exercise for an audience who has had a few years’...
Response to an act of mass violence at a school remains a hot topic for emergency response agencies across our country. When I first began teaching and presenting seminars on this ugliest of subjects, I was called names: “fear-monger,”...
Do You Really Need Both? Technical glitches have been plaguing companies across the world, resulting in business downtime and customer impact. In England, after a recent outage, some TSB bank customers could not access their accounts for a month after the incident. A...
If you talk with continuity professionals, you will often hear similar concerns about business leaders who have no visibility into or interest in continuity risks, continuity programs that are arbitrarily moved around the organization, stakeholders who simply check...
It’s 3 a.m. You are at a Cake concert. They are playing “I Will Survive.” Just as you are really getting into the song, you realize you are dreaming. It’s the ringtone on your cell phone. Groggily you answer. It’s your boss. A pipe has...
Organizations in which management is strongly supportive of business continuity efforts have been proven to have higher-performing programs than those where management support is half-hearted. Interestingly, the degree of management support given to BCM in various...
In the field of emergency management, the concepts of continuity of operations (COOP) and business continuity management (BCM) are used interchangeably, as if they are two names for the same thing. They are not. There are some fundamental differences between the two...
Our industry is very unique, where we work together both in and out of a crisis. We share experiences, advice, and information to help people, companies, infrastructure, and our worlds be resilient. That is really cool! This allows for many career opportunities as...
It’s one of the most powerful tools available in business. It creates meaningful relationships and provides unlimited growth opportunities at professional and personal levels. It increases your personal exposure. It showcases an individual’s personality....
Disaster can strike at any time. Events such as hurricanes or floods can leave businesses with outages and other power-related issues that carry significant risks. To be prepared for such an emergency, it’s essential for organizations to have a recovery plan and...
Business technology has evolved into the dynamic, web-based, data-driven systems we take for granted today. With digital transformation comes the need for speed, performance and an expectation of no downtime, no data loss and no interruption. In this fast-paced...
1. Can you provide real world examples of ransomware policies? What recommendations can you offer companies to develop an effective policy? [ZEESHAN KAZMI] Have a very solid backup policy and make it part of your BC requirements right after life safety and...
PHOENIX, Ariz. – Disaster Recovery Journal accomplished a feat it hadn’t seen in 10 years, with overwhelming success at the business continuity industry’s premier event. “Paid attendance was up 17 percent from last year,” said DRJ...
Damage from climate and weather disasters cost around $306 billion in 2017, making it the most expensive year on record for natural disasters in the United States. As we think about the fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes that ravaged...
In the current era of multi-cloud computing, there is great opportunity for businesses to leverage a variety of cloud services for their many applications. By being flexible between clouds, organizations are able to provide better services to their end users. Business...
Whether it is a hurricane, tornado, flood, or earthquake, natural disasters can strike at any time and with very little warning. Though many people worry about and prepare for the effect these events can have on their homes and personal lives, very few business owners...
Biometric technologies are on the rise internationally and they intend to invade our privacy. Just like all such intrusions, it will be taken as far as the owner of that intrusion finds it is profitable to do so. Canada is fast becoming a surveillance state, with...
During World War II, the United States was blessed with many superb leaders who were often quoted. Possibly the most heralded was U.S. Army General George S. Patton. “Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable...
We often talk about what you should do before disaster strikes. All your preparations and testing determine how well you’ll weather the unexpected natural disaster, cyberattack, power outage or other disruption. While a key part of your success will depend...
The topic of “edge IT” has become an area of intense focus for more and more data-driven organizations. This is for good reason, as the perimeter of the network has become a critical gateway for data collection and processing. The edge is now used to...
As business continuity and disaster recovery professionals, we focus our knowledge and expertise on ensuring that organizations for which we work or provide consulting expertise are prepared for natural and man-made disasters and severe outage situations. Hopefully,...
For Utility Situational Awareness During Catastrophic Emergencies According to the Department of Energy, weather-related disasters are the leading causes of power outages across the U.S. Severe weather has shut down entire cities including essential services...
If you work in business continuity management, you have probably heard something like “business continuity is boring,” or it is “just a check-box” and how plans “sit on a shelf and collect dust.” “If you need to help get to...
Why consolidating organizational knowledge is critical to business resilience Organizational knowledge – it is not a term commonly associated with business continuity, resilience, or disaster recovery, but it is a critical component. First, let us briefly...
According to the International Standards Organization ISO 22301 – Societal Security – Business Continuity Management Systems – Requirements, the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the “period of time following an incident within which a product...
No one can be an effective leader unless he or she believes in the mission of his or her organization and has faith that it is making a valuable contribution. The best leaders go even farther: they are effective advocates for their teams—to themselves, their...
After 18 years in the business continuity and disaster recovery profession, I have learned some valuable lessons in the power of networking. I admit that when I started my professional career, it was difficult for me to walk up to a person I had never met and...
We are working hard to prepare for DRJ Fall 2018, our 59th conference. The behind-the-scenes work to plan such an established conference with high-quality presentations by the industry’s most well-known and respected professionals takes months of preparation....
In late October of 1980, the precursor to the modern internet (ARPAnet) failed for an agonizing four hours. Considered to be the first major network outage, engineers scrutinized the failure in hopes of preventing future shutdowns. A lot has evolved since then. The...
Organizations face enormous risk from man-made and natural disasters. Cybercriminals from all over the world are ceaselessly poking and prodding at enterprises’ digital defenses. A recent influx of workplace violence has made on-site security policies more...
I can certainly say the common person is aware of cyber security. As for companies protecting themselves? Well, I think we still need some more work. I have been preaching linking cyber security with business continuity planning (BCP) since my DRJ Fall World 2012...
After careful research and months of planning and anticipation, you decide to buy a brand-new car. It’s sleek, shiny, and detailed the day you drive it off the lot. The last thing you would do is allow trash to accumulate on the floorboards, dirt to build up on...
If your healthcare organization did not prioritize cybersecurity before September’s announcement by Equifax that 145.5 million customer records had been breached, it likely does now. There have been larger breaches. (Yahoo had 3 billion records compromised.) The...
Is Your Recovery Plan Keeping Up? Two major disasters come to mind when you think about what we had to deal with in 2017. The first was the Atlantic hurricane season, one of the worst on record and the costliest ever, having caused more than $280 billion in damages....
When someone asks what a resilience professional does, I tell them, “You’re the calming influence.” Primarily, business continuity management (BCM) and emergency management (EM) professionals have to have that effect on people, their organizations,...
Assumptions, Insights, and Expectations Businesses must have a comprehensive strategy in place to protect their employees – wherever they happen to be working. Research firm IDC forecasted that 72 percent of the U.S. workforce would be made up of mobile workers...
The Internet of Things (IoT) is dawning, and we are about to be deluged by data. Every sensor in every building, every item in every supermarket or warehouse, and every dog, cat, or human being has the potential to be Internet-enabled and generating data on a...
On Jan. 15, 2018, the citizens of Hawaii were scared to death. The people in Hawaii were flooded with a horrifying message. They were confronted on all of their devices, on TV, on electronic road signs, a message saying that a ballistic missile was headed for Hawaii....
Public agencies should revisit their emergency-notification plans regularly, as they can become outdated fast. Confusion surrounding the 2016 terror alerts in New York City, for example, prompted the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to expand the text limit on...
In many ways, business continuity (BC) is still a budding profession. People are stepping into it from direct and indirect fields, often from a gap or company need, to ensure safety and regulatory requirements are addressed. Both authors believe BC is a dynamic,...
Would you trust your life to an airline that did not adhere to the standards of the industry? How about a hospital or drug company? The answer should be a resounding “NO.” You would not do business with any of these entities if they were not following...
If you have attended a recent DRJ conference, you may have noticed some attendees wearing green lanyards. The green lanyard is worn by all members of the DRJ Editorial Advisory Board (EAB). This is a volunteer group of 16 business continuity vendors and practitioners...
Business is constantly changing so the way we respond to crises and disasters should evolve, too. As we become faster and are able to work more with less, our connectivity makes us more accessible but also more vulnerable. So how do we keep ahead of the problems and...
Being connected is a given in our everyday lives, but at no time is it more critical than during or just after a natural disaster. When such an event strikes, first responders must be ready to deploy anywhere on earth, at a moment’s notice. For first responders...
We continue to watch in horror as recent natural disasters wreak devastation throughout the Western Hemisphere. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria left a swath of destruction from Houston to Florida and across the Caribbean. In Northern California, wildfires continue...
Disasters come in many forms. There are the things you think about when you hear words like earthquakes, floods, and other natural events. There are man-made disasters, like power outages and electrical fires. For IT professionals, there are malware and ransomware...
In Kentucky, where the Bourbon whiskey industry generates more than $125 million in tax revenue each year, knowing the specific properties of whiskey-related fires is critical to preserving people, product, and property. Earlier this year, 25 volunteer firefighters...
Factors People Consider When Deciding if Evacuation is Necessary There are many types of natural disasters, frequently wreaking havoc and leaving devastation in their wake. One such natural disaster – hurricanes – was the focus of this field study....
Data protection, IT disaster recovery, and business continuity are not solely about processes, but also about an aspect often overlooked – people. As many processes become automated and with many organizations allowing – or requiring – employees to...
One of the many challenges that continues to plague enterprise resiliency programs is how to contribute genuine business value to the organization using standard recovery and resiliency practices. Establishing a recovery and resiliency framework specifically aimed at...
Evolving Business Continiuty 10 years in 10 months I. Dr. Kerzner and the Struggles of Project Management There are a great many parallels between the history and challenges of project management (PM) and those of business continuity (BC). For years, PM...
Prepared U.S. companies that do business in the UK and EU have spent much of 2017 organizing for the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and closely watching the UK’s decision to leave the European Union (Brexit). Combined, these two...
Ensuring Business Continuity in Europe’s Evolving Corporate Climate Our European business climate is rife with potential risks these days. Countries where the political landscape has remained relatively stable now face polarization, borders are being hardened,...
Have you heard the adage, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it?” Its truth is obvious in the case of someone like the CEO of a company, who could not make sound decisions without knowing the company’s expenses, profit margin, and...
In your years as a recovery planner, have you ever taken a phone call where you found yourself saying to the caller, “What? Can you repeat that?” They spoke so fast that you weren’t sure you heard them right. But after they took a deep breath and...
Forrester Research and the Disaster Recovery Journal have partnered to field a number of market studies on business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) trends in order to gather data for company comparison and benchmarking, to guide research, and for the...
Whether you are a seasoned business continuity professional, brand new to the industry, or just embarking on your career journey there is a wealth of knowledge and experience at your fingertips for you to enjoy on the Disaster Recovery Journal website! Frequently...
Leadership matters. Regardless of our experience, age, industry, or profession – we need good leadership. The right leadership has the capability to lead, transform, and inspire each of us onto greater things. I want to personally thank you for being part of the...
In the wake of rising tensions between North Korea and the United States, many believe the world’s populations need to be prepared for a nuclear-related nuclear event. Without getting into politics or specific threats, this article examines nuclear preparedness...
When a crisis strikes, it can cause an earthquake of fear and stress to erupt within a company affecting its team members, stakeholders, and customers. Without a concrete plan of action, a business can quickly fall apart from the inside out. These impacts can create a...
New research from ITIC has found that each hour of IT infrastructure downtime can cost businesses between $100,000 and $300,000. With the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 2017 predictions for an above average hurricane season turning to be true,...
Organizations need to continue sustained focus on their cyber security resources to make sure they end the year on the right foot. There could be nothing worse than a crippling security breach in the final quarter of the year to stifle momentum for the new year....
Business disruptions that cannot be contained using standard operating procedures (SOPs) can be classified as incidents. An incident may cause disaster recovery and/or business continuity plans to be invoked. Those invoked activities are an incident response. Think of...
You are experiencing an outage. Servers have crashed, and your applications are unreachable. You have assessed that you cannot easily bring your production systems back up. You can’t quickly fix the production issue causing the outage either, and you need to...
As the security threat landscape continues to widen and breaches become more commonplace, enterprises must be vigilant with the protection of sensitive data and intellectual property, but this is not just the responsibility of IT teams. Proper risk management and...
Many studies have been done on the factors that help crisis management teams succeed. These offer a lot of helpful information. However, they are of limited use to the business continuity manager who is looking for guidance on how to help his or her crisis management...
Ah, communications – we all need to do it day in and day out, some do it very well while others struggle, whether in personal or professional situations. Wikipedia defines communications as “the act of conveying intended meaning to another entity through...
Five Steps To Prepare For An Active Shooter Situation Active shooters in the workplace not only threaten human life and the wellbeing of the workforce, but also threaten business continuity and the very future of the business. According to the Insurance Information...
In the late 70s, Garrett Morris portrayed a fictional character named “Chico Esquela” on Saturday Night Live. His catch phrase was, “Baseball has been berry berry good to me.” In homage to that character, I can say that business continuity has...
We are living in challenging times. Often just when we feel like we have everything under control and can relax a bit we’re hit with unexpected news and events. From the wildfires in California, Idaho, Montano, Oregon, and Washington State to Hurricanes Harvey,...
Of all the ways cyberattacks have become crippling in recent years, ransomware may be the most ruthless. The scope of the recent WannaCry attack was unprecedented, but ransomware has been costing businesses billions of dollars globally for years. This year alone,...
Organizations know how important it is to manage risk. However, many risk evaluations are not done systematically. This is an introduction to the process steps and terms that should be understood. Risk is the effect – positive or negative – of an event or...
According to the National Weather Service (NWS), weather accounts for roughly 98 percent of presidentially declared disasters. The cost of these natural disasters is high: hurricanes and other weather events cause about 500 deaths and nearly $15 billion in damage in...
Neal Kaderabek is the CIO for Great Lakes Higher Education (GLHE). He joined GLHE in 2015 with the specific goal of maximizing the company’s IT capabilities, cultivating the IT/business partnerships, developing IT long-term strategy, and aligning people,...
How resilient is your organization? Current and past incidents teach us that business disruptions, crises, and disasters occur far more frequently than previously imagined. Last year’s massive winter storm on the East Coast, widespread flooding in the...
What Really Matters in Continuity Planning “What’s the worst that could happen?” Now there’s a saying business continuity practitioners have probably heard a thousand times. But it is a saying we have in the ether of our planning minds; it is...
In 1996, a gentleman named James Clark became frustrated with the patient care experience. He lamented the fact that his patient information from one doctor was often not available to another. He realized, in that bygone time, his information could be networked and...
Data protection is a vast and complex space. Providers are responsible for preventing loss by inventorying and controlling said data – curating the most crucial company assets and ensuring they are secure. This also means managing and eliminating the excess, as...
Crisis. Disaster. Attack. These emotionally charged words catapult our brains into overdrive. You’ve heard it countless times: be proactive. Maybe you roll your eyes and say, “I know.” Perhaps it is coupled with an audible groan of annoyance. We hear...
When Disgruntled Key Employees Don’t Show Up One threat often overlooked is that of key employees unwilling to respond after a disastrous event. Once unthinkable, changes in corporate culture and society have caused this to be a real threat to your recovery time...
After achieving a recent professional goal, I began reflecting on the people who have helped me to make progress and achieve milestones in my career. One person came to mind, followed by another, and another, until I had a list of more than a dozen names. Even though...
Welcome! I assume you’re reading this at DRJ Fall World 2017 or you’re on your way to Phoenix to attend our conference. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again – thank you. Thank you for being part of the DRJ community. Thank you for...
Whether you’re implementing or just refining your disaster recovery (DR) process, one of the most important things to consider is your team. Depending on the people at the helm, your efforts will either be thorough and coordinated, or incomplete and disjointed....
Suppose something suddenly happened that would affect a lot of your customers, employees or both—say, a hurricane, a major network outage, a hazardous spill or a derailment. How quickly could you tell all of them how you’re handling the situation?...
When or if. Much more than simple conjunctions, these two terms represent a widening technology gulf and risk mindset that could potentially undermine an entire company. For IT professionals the alarming words after the conjunction are “a major disaster...
The American threat landscape is changing with the emergence of the cyber threats in the form of malicious software or malware. The United States government is struggling with ways to ensure the nation is prepared to respond to a cyber-related attack that disrupts...
With technology increasing each minute, nowadays a realistic approach to business continuity is needed in today’s world. The current trend to automate process and data exchange in manufacturing technologies initiated the implementation of what is called the...
Your plant or data center is a sum of its parts. It is the end result of what seems like countless hours of planning and support from your team along with the cooperation of various vendors. The equipment onsite can include Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPSs),...
Technology is changing the speed and accuracy with which information is gathered, analyzed, and acted upon. Relationships are central to this technological evolution as are establishing connections among related data, and then surfacing useful information from those...
If you look back just 30 years, it’s apparent how much technology has shaped the modern business landscape. Odds are that your company is not able to function without Internet, email, cloud, Software-as-a-Service, etc. – and you’re not alone....
The Board of Directors at Private and Public Businesses, Inc. (PPBI) mourns the loss of our friend, Board of Advisors and key contributor to the Emergency Planning, Response, Business Continuity and Academic communities which he served, Dr. Thomas D. Phelan. In...
You’re out with family and friends having a great time when your cell phone rings. You recognize the phone number and sigh. It’s a calling tree exercise! You think, “Great! We have this system that calls everyone automatically, so why do I have to...
When a summer storm hits, will your business be able to handle it? Nearly 40 percent of small businesses never reopen after a disaster strikes, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). In fact, just a few inches of standing water from a hurricane,...
Recently, my company conducted a survey of more than 150 IT professionals across 22 industries to learn more about IT incidents, incident management tools, and processes. The goal of this research was to gain insight into the incident management trends and challenges...
What Business Can Learn From Each The headlines are flooded by them. Businesses are tired of them. Your customers are concerned about them. I’m talking about cybersecurity attacks. Malware, ransomware, and other forms of cybersecurity attacks are on the rise....
Ray Trombley, MBCP, MBCI, is senior vice president, corporate business continuity manager for Bank of Hawaii Corporation. Trombley has been with BOH for more than 18 years. Beyond his work at BOH, he is the founder and chairman of HawaiiFIRST for Continuity...
In today’s age of having everything online, not only can your consumers or employees face passive threats in just about every social platform imaginable, but institutions are prone to actively exposing confidential data. Compliance Complications Draft EU Data...
Within the past two years, there have been numerous major technology-related disruptions to the operations of airlines in the United States. Each of these disruptions have been traced back to either the failure of a technology component or a disruption in the power...
At Greater Risk for an IT Disaster? According to the Harvard Business Review, 60 percent of all mergers and acquisitions (M&A) end up destroying shareholder value. While much of this failure is caused by a strategic mismatch between the two organizations, smooth...
Some of the most popular topics at conferences seem to revolve around the issues of measuring, monitoring, and managing business continuity and disaster recovery. You have probably heard the adage “measure twice, cut once.” The home improvement concept is...
Most business continuity planners understand the importance and value of performing a business impact analysis (BIA) to best determine what is truly needed, and by when, in the event of a significant disruptive event. Unfortunately, it can be viewed as an unnecessary...
There is a saying that says “the more things change, the more things stay the same.” I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as I reflect on Spring World 2017 and the state of our industry. I’m starting to think that this saying, has had its...
Not a week goes by without news of some airline system crisis, data backup failures or power outages taking down a big-brand website. In the first two months of 2017, we saw network outages at United and Delta airlines and an employee at DevOps startup GitLab...
In today’s cloud era, there’s no good reason for a company to build a secondary data center when they are considering a data infrastructure and disaster recovery (DR) strategy. But, somehow, I still talk to CIOs who go through the process. They might have...
In the current business climate where budgets are increasingly stretched, competition is increasing, and the impetus is on doing more, there is a driving need for organizations to ensure operations are running smoothly. While the ever-important customer experience and...
The cloud is no longer just a consideration. It’s a requirement. Some 78 percent of organizations expect cloud spending to increase in the next three years, according to a recent Economist Intelligence Unit survey. Just 6 percent said they had a quarter or less...
Among DR/BC customers many plan to rely only on near real time replication and frequent snapshots as an appropriate (and only) solution for protecting data. And, while the near-real-time replication and frequent snapshots are essential to any disaster recovery and...
The old “once-in-a-lifetime” disaster seems almost common place nowadays. Recently that catastrophic image filled the news yet again. A very large forest fire broke out in the Smoky Mountain National Park and spilled over to the town of Gatlinburg, Tenn....
Your hospital IT department has gotten tough on data security. It has strengthened firewalls, encrypted laptops, and instituted mobile device management that can remotely wipe mobile devices if they’re lost or stolen. Hospital policies require frequent password...
One of the challenges I have seen over my 30 years in the business continuity industry is for people charged with executing DR or BC plans to accept and execute the plans in the format they are written. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the area of IT...
Every day we hear about cyber attacks impacting large retailers, small businesses, hospital systems, and even esteemed financial institutions. Is your organization prepared for this kind of assault? How prepared are you? What would your team do if a breach were...
It’s an unfortunate reality that in the world of IT, disasters, whether man-made or natural, will happen. According to the most recent report by the Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council, fully one in four of the organizations surveyed said they had...
New risks are emerging every day in the realm of cybersecurity, and many organizations are moving quickly to address these risks: developing documentation, procedures, and processes. However, this is often without regard for cybersecurity best practices. To ensure...
Forrester Research and the Disaster Recovery Journal have partnered to field a number of market studies in business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) in order to gather data for company comparison and benchmarking and to guide research and publication of best...
Practitioners of business continuity should calculate and evaluate their productivity level. Periodically determining one’s productivity should yield illuminating and challenging insights. While this approach could support any occupational discipline, I am focusing...
This time of the year is often a time of renewal for many. We’ve made it through the winter, recovered from the holidays, and we have our eyes firmly set on the rest of the year. At DRJ, 2017 has already been a truly outstanding year. We’ve been through a...
Natural disasters cause nearly 500 deaths annually in the United States. Unfortunately, healthcare facilities in the U.S. continue to fall short in disaster planning and preparedness. This lack of preparation creates the potential for serious ramifications,...
The modern day CIO is under constant pressure to implement new technologies that empower the business, while simultaneously keeping critical data, applications, and processes readily available. In today’s “new normal” economy, organizations of all...
This summer, fires raged through the West: In California, more than 4,000 firefighters were stretched to their limits battling nine wildfires, calling in assistance from some 650 firefighters from Arizona, and tapping additional resources from New Mexico. Fires Create...
Cybersecurity has evolved greatly over the last 20 years and, in fact, nothing about it is the same as when the concept of cybersecurity first emerged. Need proof? Even dictionaries have not kept pace with the growth with many still promoting the idea that...
Did you hear that? That was time zipping by. Yes, it’s a very busy time of the year spent balancing work, family, friends, and getting ready for the holidays. So often at this time of the year we revert to tradition. We do what has always worked and most are...
A robust enterprise risk management includes mitigating and planning to respond to risks identified in business continuity, disaster recovery, information/cyber security, physical security, emergency management, and other risk management areas. Risk management is...
When a hurricane moves from “watch” to “warning,” then it’s likely you and your business only have a day or less to prepare. Part of this preparation should be laser focused on how to best save your company’s data, which is the...
Data crime is more rampant than ever, and every SMB should have a disaster recovery plan (DRP) that anticipates the possibility of data corruption or worse. Like criminals who progress from breaking and entering, to grand theft auto, to abduction, ransom and capital...
When we think of disaster recovery, natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, fire, or floods often come to mind. Also at the top of our list of concerns are hardware system failures. But the fact is, most recovery efforts are a result of human...
Lamar Poppell of Jack Henry and Associates has seen a thing or two in his 20 years as a business continuity practitioner. He’s held different jobs at various companies in several states. As the years go by and his scenery changes, Lamar has also watched the...
As business continuity continues its growth as a profession, the idea of certification and the membership of professional bodies are more frequently discussed at all levels of the organization; from those starting out their career in the industry, right up to the...
One of the scariest and most damaging types of malware threats today is Ransomware, which results in encryption (locking) of valuable electronic files and the demand of paying a “ransom” fee to release them. Healthcare organizations – the keepers of...
Figure 1: The requirements of the cloud generation are more complex and difficult to meet than previous generation data centers. My colleague Jack Pouchet has been posing an interesting question lately: have data centers become so focused on driving down PUE that...
Aug. 9, 2014, will forever remain a day that changed the St. Louis metropolitan region. The death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., unlocked the boiling temperatures of St. Louis residents. From protesting, tear gas, police blockades, to riots, traveling in the...
Tips Every Organization Must Follow to Protect Business Continuity Ransomware is not new. In fact, forms of ransomware have been around for over a decade; however, these earlier forms were largely ineffective. They took on the form of “scare-ware” or...
If you’re a business owner, keeping your doors open is always job No. 1. Unfortunately, many businesses and organizations are unprepared for potential disasters. According to reports from the Association for Financial Professionals and IDG Research, 92 percent...
Business executives understand the risks associated with running a company and take the time to develop and implement a comprehensive risk management strategy. This strategy covers the protection of physical assets, loss of income, personnel, cyber, professional...
It’s happening right now in clandestine labs around the world: an old warehouse in an abandoned industrial park in Russia, a government-supported facility in North Korea, maybe even the basement of an unremarkable house in a working-class St. Louis...
Whether you’re the CEO, IT head, or an executive tasked with the process of maintaining business security, there will be a lot on your plate to keep you busy. Depending on the nature of your business, you may need to protect more than your own assets, data, and...
Hesston, Kansas, is the picturesque Midwestern town. Hesston is located 36 miles north of Wichita. It is very much a town like the stereotypical American small towns Norman Rockwell painted years ago. According to the 2010 census it has a population of 3,709 people....
For a couple of weeks in June, the Air Force thought it had lost 100,000 investigation records dating back to 2004. According to reports, the Air Force’s Automated Case Tracking System (ACTS) database became corrupted, and because of how the data was backed up,...
Organizations are increasingly analyzing operational data in order to reveal a significant competitive advantage, increase revenue, or mitigate risk. These big data workloads are becoming essential to operations and are required to run in real-time, continuous data...
Natural and manmade disasters are occurring with alarming regularity. While news stories frequently cover damage to homes and consumers, businesses often experience greater losses, ranging from physical destruction to downtime. One major key for firms to survive in a...
DRJ Fall World 2016 brought more than 1,100 industry practitioners, speakers, and exhibitors from around the world to a new conference venue, the J.W. Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort and Spa in Phoenix, Ariz., Sept. 18-21, 2016. Nearly 900 paid attendees took...
Among the many dependencies that organizations have, the data center is probably the most significant. It sits at the heart of IT operations, which makes it vital for the business in today’s digital economy. IT disaster recovery planning, or “IT...
What is in your plan? Who developed your plan? How did you exercise your plan? Have you updated your plan? Why do you even have a plan? Have you ever used your plan? Does your plan work? These are just a few questions you and your colleagues should be asking one...
Most everyone knows that Disaster Recovery Journal publishes a world-class quarterly magazine with articles that chronicle readiness, risk mitigation, resilience, and high availability. DRJ is also recognized as the preeminent source of conferences that encourage...
One of my favorite subjects to discuss and write about is the issue of realistic testing when conducting an exercise. While the subject of this article might seem like a simple play on words, the differences and implications of each statement are quite important to...
With the increasing volume of malicious files being detected and the number of attacks growing year after year, it seems that today’s cyber attackers are winning. While cyber professionals cannot completely stop cyber attackers from trying, the damage caused can...
In September 2008, I was seated in the back of a hot, noisy Chinook helicopter flying into Helmand Province in Afghanistan. I was to take over as head of planning for the military and civilian operations for the entire province. I never envisaged that more than 400...
In the good ole days of ransomware, hackers only went after consumers and their individual files and folders. Older types of ransomware such as CryptoWall and CryptoLocker encrypt your individual files and documents when they infected a system. Much of the guidance...
At long last, disaster recovery initiatives are no longer doomed to the proverbial back burner as IT and business executives finally begin to align on the importance of business continuity initiatives. It’s been an uphill battle for many IT teams, but the...
Our world has become more distributed and data-centric than ever before. That is transforming how IT organizations manage application delivery and performance for the ever-increasing number of users who work on the edge. Or at least, it should. The edge is where...
Businesses rely heavily on technology, and technology disruption for a few days or even a few hours can result in significant financial loss. According to an ITIC survey, over 95 percent of large enterprises with more than 1,000 employees say that a single hour of...
I know you! Not personally, of course, but take my word for it. You don’t know me but I know you, and you’d be surprised (shocked, really) by just how well I know you. We’ve never met and yet I know your name, your home address, where you work and how long you’ve...
In the Fort McMurray forest fire that swept across Canada, recently crossing from Alberta into Saskatchewan, rescue workers have acted bravely, fighting fires, rescuing city buildings and homes, and evacuating residents. One transport company, having removed its staff...
Ransomware is fast becoming a huge challenge to the corporate world. Ransomware is a kind of malware that limits access to the computer system that becomes infected, whereby demanding some sort of ransom paid to the creator(s) of the malware in order for the threat to...
As a BC/DR professional, you are without a doubt aware that ransomware has impacted many businesses over the past few years. Downtime associated with ransomware can be costly. The malware, which encrypts data on infected systems, has become a lucrative tool for cyber...
In this article, I’d like to discuss one of the mainstays of how we have done business continuity planning dating back to the late ’70s when some of us became involved in the industry. Essentially, the position I am taking is that the business impact...
Every month you change the filter on your furnace. Every 3,000 miles you get the oil changed on your car. Every six months you (hopefully) visit your dentist for a cleaning. Maintenance is important. It’s key to keeping you, your home, or your auto running...
When it comes to ensuring security for legacy and emerging data storage needs, companies are at a crossroad. Many companies are starting to invest in technologies like cloud to meet their storage demands. In many ways, cloud services have fundamentally changed data...
For many years, during the height of what was to be non-traditional conflicts throughout the world the military used us to prepare thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations for the ongoing conflicts. With a keen focus and resolute energy, we coached,...
The severity and frequency of global events and emergencies, their implications for business performance and personal safety and the complexity of regulatory challenges are increasing. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), there were 43 natural...
According to a recent IDC report titled “DevOps and the Cost of Downtime: Fortune 1000 Best Practice Metrics Quantified,” the average total cost of unplanned application downtime for a Fortune 1000 company is between $1.25 and $2.5 billion per year. The...
Information technology provides enormous value for organizations, but it can also represent a tremendous point of weakness. No matter your industry, data drives your business. And when markets are global, employees work around the clock and business is effectively...
You’ve moved your disaster recovery operation to the cloud and now it’s time to test it. That’s essential because it’s the only way to guarantee your plan works and that you can recover critical data after a disruption. Plus, testing allows you...
Improving Battery Reliability with Automation Disasters are a challenge for any business regardless of their products or services, hence the essential role of business continuity planning. For industries such as telecommunications, utilities, railroads, and...
We all know the story. Calamity, large or small, befalls data center. IT scrambles to save the day by ensuring systems fail over rapidly and functionally. Nowadays, modern IT DR systems are, to a great extent, cloud-based. So the failover happens five seconds later to...
Businesses that are facing pressures to cut costs and reduce staff often look to their IT department first when deciding which sectors of their organization to downsize. While some companies are under the impression that an on-premise IT department can provide better...
It’s not what you know but who you know. This business mantra has been around since the mid-1900s. Yes, way back before conferences, social media, e-mail, professional organizations, LinkedIn, instant messaging, and “friending” – savvy folks...
Few business continuity (BC) tasks exceed the importance or visibility of determining the recovery time objective (RTO). Unfortunately, dysfunctional practices can creep into this process and cause “arbitrary” RTOs to be created. Three key examples of...
One of the latest threats to organizations is something termed “ransomware.” Commonly defined as a type of malware that blocks access to an application and its data until the victim pays a predetermined amount of money. You may have read about two recent...
On April 25, 2015 a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Kathmandu, Nepal and surrounding communities. More than 8,000 people were killed. Over 120 aftershocks followed this initial earthquake. On May 12, 2015 a 7.3 magnitude earthquake hit eastern Nepal close to Mount...
The weakest link in the chain is the strengthof resilience for any organization. Business continuity drills are the key to detect, address, and strengthen that weakest link. Why drills? Without a solid drill plan in place, the business continuity team can never...
According to a top research and advisory firm, more than 6 billion connected “things” will be in use this year, a 30 percent increase over last year. The same report estimates that 5.5 million new “things” — devices, sensors, etc. — are connected daily. By 2020, there...
Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.” Organizations, government, and private sector try to control this chaos through plans and training. No...
Perhaps no industrial accident in recent memory has had such an impact on public awareness of chemical safety as the explosions at the Port of Tianjin that killed more than 170 people last year. The largest of the blasts was the equivalent of more than 21 tons of TNT...
Plan for the future. Act today for tomorrow. Be ready for what comes next. These phrases flash on our screens and in magazines more than we realize. In general, these messages are trying to get people to think about their futures (and sell something). But, for you and...
As business continuity practitioners, we should maintain an attitude of “constructive-discomfort.” This mindset should influence our view of our role in the organization, our interaction with supported teammates and staff, the artifacts we produce, and our...
One of the projects I am most excited about in 2016 is my role as BCI US Group chairperson for the Business Continuity Institutes’ 20/20 Think Tank initiative. In the title of this article, you will observe that I use the term BCM, or business continuity management....
As the digital ecosystem within enterprises proliferate, so do the cybersecurity risks and vulnerabilities. Before organizations look outside for effective governance, risk and compliance, and business continuity tools to manage this ecosystem, they also need to...
The ability to recover critical systems in a timely manner during an event is the cornerstone of any effective disaster recovery program. All too often large and small organizations fail to recover their critical infrastructure and applications because of the...
The global economy is in a significant state of disharmony involving the flow of trade between the world’s nations. This has resulted in most of the recent major economic calamities. In April 1959, then Sen. John F. Kennedy said, “The Chinese use two brush strokes to...
A successful data management organization enables the achievement of business goals and objectives efficiently and in a cost-effective manner. DM organizations which consistently achieve this have a clear, robust, and well-defined data management strategy. Overlooking...
The federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), and corresponding state laws were designed to impose liability on parties determined to be responsible for releases of hazardous substances into the environment, and the...
Each of us likes to have a plan… To know what is around the corner and what could be coming a bit further along. Whether you’re type A, type B or type Z – you want to have some idea of what could happen. This is what lies at the heart of what we do. Being ready...
Ah, there is nothing better than an ice cold glass of water. Turning on the tap and seeing the clear, crisp, and clean water fill your glass is a feeling we take for granted. We take for granted that we have daily access to clean water for cooking, drinking, bathing,...
A few weeks ago, the Zika virus made the news, but it was largely overshadowed with other issues. But now, the Zika virus is front and center. Initially thought to be isolated to a small geographic area, we’re now learning that the Zika virus is a pressing and growing...
In a natural or man-made disaster, the public works staffs undertake a first responder role. The primary responsibility of the Orange County Public Works, Roads and Drainage Division after such an event is to provide roadway access for emergency traffic, debris...
Disaster recovery (DR) has been a challenge for IT organizations for decades, with much of that challenge stemming from the cost and complexity of legacy solutions. Since IT operations have (and will continue to) evolve, these legacy solutions often cause more...
The recent 10th anniversary of devastating Hurricane Katrina – which claimed 1,833 lives and caused $81 billion in property damage and took an incalculable economic and social toll – underscored again how resilient businesses can weather such disasters and what...
A severe weather alert has been announced for Eastern United States. This weather alert is in effect until late Sunday. The predicted snowfall of 12 inches in New York and 30 inches in Washington is combined with extremely high winds, thunder snow, rain and sleet. All...
A few weeks ago we posted a short column about the flooding in the Southern United States, Northern England and South America. At the time, it was too early to dig into any analysis or review of measures that could have been taken to prepare citizens, communities,...
We truly live in an era of innovation and information. It seems like every week there is a new “must have” app or a better faster way of doing something. Research, discoveries, and information-sharing are ongoing in these fast changing times. From my perspective at...
Business continuity, business resumption, contingency planning, disaster recovery, continuity of operations – why so many terms? Is there any difference? Does it really matter? Are they interchangeable? If not, which one is appropriate and when? Doesn’t everyone know...
Forrester Research and Disaster Recovery Journal have partnered to field a number of market studies in business continuity (BC), disaster recovery (DR), and overall enterprise risk management (ERM) in order to gather data for company comparison and benchmarking, to...
Have you ever received an e-mail similar to this from your security team? “Your network/domain password must be changed to protect the integrity of our data. A system breach was detected which is necessitating this change.” Now let’s assume your company doesn’t use...
Six months ago, a major U.S. health insurance leader was breached by hackers who stole access to records of upwards of 80 million customers. The stolen data comprised of names, birth dates, social security numbers, home addresses, email addresses, and employment...
How many of you have ever played the game Tetris? I have it on my iPhone, as some of you might, and it can serve as a reminder of building a resiliency program for your organization. What’s the connection? Read on! In this article, I’d like to explore the issue of...
The impact of a crisis or disaster can shake your workforce. Even if your organization has prepared ahead of time, a real-life experience can be traumatic and life-altering. The stress can take a significant toll on employee morale, health, and productivity. It is...
The road to ensuring comprehensive and reliable data protection and recovery is fraught with complexity, expense, and often confusion. For decades, the high cost of a complete data protection and recovery solution was largely out of reach to small and medium-sized...
Being prepared is more than just a scout motto. It is a must-have for any company to survive a disaster, natural or man-made. Some events come with warnings such as hurricanes and snow storms where companies can batten down the hatches and communicate with customers...
The forces of nature are as powerful as they are unpredictable, or so the story goes. The reality, in fact, is that while the specific outcomes of weather events may be difficult to determine, there exist plenty of patterns from which we can glean enough information...
Floods. Record water levels. Bloated waterways. Constant rain. Deaths. Loss of homes. Destruction of businesses. Evacuations. So many questions and not many answers. Sadly this is reality for people living in the U.S. Midwest, Northern England and South America. We...
It’s been three years since the atrocity at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Three years since the murders – in their school – of 20 children and six school staff members. Three years and countless hours of talk and debate and rhetoric, but...
We’re in the last few weeks of 2015 and we already have eyes pointed forward to 2016. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we thought it would be refreshing and motivating to take a look back at the topics we discussed in 2015. To put it lightly, we ran a lot...
When your business communications network is down, or when weather or other disasters keep your employees from getting to the office, you’re losing money with every minute. There is no doubt that business continuity is critical, but the question becomes what...
The climate crisis. Climate Change. Global Warming. This isn’t going to go away without some effort from all of us. This week the Paris climate summit is tackling the large issues of the climate, the environment, 2 degrees Celsius, and what can and needs to be done....
Do you think about the security of your hospital and medical records? Have you thought about what this data tells others about yourself? Your address, your phone number, your detailed medical records, and the ability to dig deeper into your personal and professional...
The Eiffel Tower. Champs Élysées. Arc de Triomphe. Le Louvre. La Seine. Montmartre. Luxembourg Gardens. Crepes. Tour de France. City of Love. When I used to think of Paris, France, these are the words that came to mind. Memories from my two visits to this beautiful...
As seen by this summer’s severe weather in Texas and across the southwestern United States, one of the most immediate and significant impacts of flooding and natural disasters is the sudden and wide-scale breakdown or interruption of communications infrastructure....
Telecom communications and cloud computing services have become critical to our national infrastructure. However, the same standards that follow the principles of roads, water, and even power distribution are not applied to data center services. If the construction of...
Disasters are unavoidable. From the storm of the century to the backhoe severing a power line at a local construction site, disasters come in many forms. However, even the most mundane of “disasters” can have a devastating effect on your business if it...
The concept of cloud backup has been around awhile and seems well-understood: you back up your business data and store it “in the cloud” (network of servers) so it can be retrieved on demand at a later date. What is less well-understood is the idea of cloud disaster...
How do you explain what it is you do? Do you use words like continuity, recovery, planning, contingencies, and resiliency? Are you sometimes confused over what term you should be using these days? You’re not alone – the growth and boom in our industry has resulted in...
When organizations decide to outsource a critical service, business continuity (BC) leaders must increase vigilance over third-party contractual obligations related to recovery. Recovery time objective (RTO), one of the most commonly-used terms in our profession, can...
Disasters seem all around us nowadays. Not a day goes by without some sort of disaster or terrorist attack occurring somewhere in the world filling the news. The New York Times on July 21, 2015, ran an article on a study from the Norwegian Refugee Council. The Refugee...
At this time of year, many of us are scrambling to get plans exercised to meet a calendar year commitment or deadline, so I’d like to explore the issue of continuity plans and how “actionable” they really are. This actually applies to all types of continuity plans –...
Your company’s risk landscape is constantly changing. There’s a wide scope of factors to take into account, from weather-induced regional risks to the potential chaos provoked by cybersecurity breaches. Two vendor surveys recently found that 54 percent of...
With several standards being developed and some areas overlapping, compliance requires significant effort and is mandatory. If compliance is costly, then we need to think of the cost of non-compliance, which is more costly. This article focuses on business continuity...
Regardless of what it is you have to say, there has never been a better time for any person or organization to have something to say. You have more options today than at any time in the past to get your message out, and those options can spread your message faster and...
Automats – those fast-food vending machines – were before my time. I wasn’t born in Gotham. I wasn’t raised in the Windy City. I grew up hopelessly suburban and automats were mostly out of vogue before I showed up. Still, whether seeing an automat in an old film,...
The resounding success of more than a hundred BCP/DR drills that I have done with my clients actually worries me! In delivering business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) services over the years, I have closely worked with clients in making every single...
It is hard to pick up a paper or listen to the news without being reminded of the ever-increasing amount of natural and manmade disasters occurring in today’s world. Currently, there are reports of tornadoes and flooding in the Midwest; at the end of summer, we’ll see...
Volkswagen emissions scandal… Bad news for car manufacturers. Bad news for Volkswagen. Bad news for big business. Bad news for management. Bad news for workers. Bad news for car dealerships. Good news for environmental protection standards. Good news for...
Identity and access management (IAM) is one of the mission critical information systems that many organizations operate as part of their overall information security program. IAM is a combination of identity management (IDM) and access management (AM) systems....
August 28, 2005 is a day that stands out as marking one of the worst natural disaster ever experienced in the United States. Television and Internet viewers watched as the city of New Orleans, LA was overcome with the force of Hurricane Katrina. Over 1,000 people were...
Q and A with DRJ Fall World 2015 Speakers In this column we’ve taken a different approach. With DRJ Fall World 2015 right around the corner, we’ve got education, networking and the future on our minds. In light of this and as part of our goal to highlight the latest...
If you’re an online photo center customer of WalMart, Tesco, CVS, Rite Aid, Costco or Sam’s Club you may have received a similar email: We were recently informed of a potential compromise of customer credit card data involving Walmart Canada’s Photocentre website,...
Typically in this column we point our business continuity binoculars at a recent news event, taking a critical look at the news coverage, the decisions made (and not made) by those involved in the event, and offer up some thoughts/ suggestions/criticisms of the entire...
I was recently forwarded an e-mail from an IT director who asked, “There is such a quandary about disk defragmentation in the virtualization world. One says defrag and another says never. Who is right?” Before I turn this into the end-all, be-all article on SAN...
Leveraging the Resilience of FT and HA Solutions Most enterprises face challenges in effective data management. To that end, one of today’s dominant tech solutions continues to be virtualization—partly because it fits well with consolidation, an ongoing trend in data...
Often it can be challenging to know what to say. This includes both the good times and the not-so-good times. Communication is one of the trickier aspects of being human. You’d think that after so many instances of watching, hearing and reading about others messing...
Ah, summertime – the pace of life has slowed down a bit and it seems like everyone is out enjoying the fresh warm summer days. This time of the year is when we often find ourselves being more active, visiting with friends and family more and taking some much-needed...
Several years ago, I published an article with DRJ entitled “Facts and Stats” that listed the scales of measurement for various types of phenomena, mostly weather related. Recently, I was amazed to see a few of these have since been updated … Cyclones,...
California, the US Geological Survey and the media have inadvertently misled the public into thinking earthquakes just happen, and there is nothing to do but wait, suffer, and recover. Nothing is further from the truth. While humans have no control over Earth...
Learn about six best practices that can help your organization ensure higher service availability, protect data better, and improve system performance. Downtime of critical business services, associated data loss, and the need to maintain required performance levels...
No matter how well-prepared a region is, it is a reality that crises can and will happen. Although critical events can’t always be prevented, with proper planning and the correct systems in place the level of physical, financial, or reputational damage can be...
Information is the currency of today’s economy. It flows at lightning speed from one end of the world to the other. Reputations and profits grow or crash seemingly in hours or days. The catalyst that pushes this is how we get information from the Internet, social...
Jeff Dato is the head of regional risk and reputation (Americas) for InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). Dato has been an active member in the business continuity industry for nearly three decades. He has authored numerous articles, is a mentor, and is highly sought...
I recently had the opportunity to participate in a business continuity event, hosted by the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, which took a close look at resilience in supply chain management. It was a wonderfully new experience, with at...
According to a recent Consumer Reports story, NYU Langone Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital had to evacuate nearly 1,000 patients when the impact of Superstorm Sandy caused power and back-up systems to fail. When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, failing generators...
How long can the nation’s electrical power grid endure without a catastrophic event? It’s a question that energy and homeland security officials routinely ask – along with what they can do to prevent or mitigate such a calamity. Utilities and their corporate customers...
In the data-driven world we live in today, fast and reliable access to information to and from your company’s business system is critical to the survival of your business. Without a reliable infrastructure, your data is at risk. The primary focus of this critical...
Everyone loves good news and hates the bad. Hearing “yes” is great, hearing “no” is not so great. Desiring to hear “you will be getting all you asked” is human nature. It makes life better, less stressful, and often times makes your job simpler. Just like there is no...
The importance of public private partnerships in assisting in planning, response, and recovery from a disaster has long been known. Over the years you have read in this column about real-world examples of these partnerships. But I still see a reluctance of private...
Every day, CEOs ask: How are we better than our rivals? How are we going to stay better? Sound familiar? For many, the answer increasingly lies in cloud computing. Companies are embracing it enthusiastically, because cloud can help companies be more agile, lower...
DevOps is an important technology movement that is often misunderstood. It may seem like just another exotic and passing software fad. However, DevOps is gaining enough steam that it’s important to understand its impact on IT. What is DevOps and Where Did it Come...
We’re six months into 2015 so it seemed fitting to take a look-back at the first half of this year…but then I stumbled onto a fascinating article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine – and I changed my mind. You’ve likely heard of Internet trolls. According to...
If you’re like most companies today, your disaster recovery (DR) plans rely on disk-to-disk (D2D) backup to provide recovery of your most critical data, applications, and systems. While D2D provides fast, on-premises recovery speed and availability, it also has some...
Different But The Same: A Look At Two Disasters Sometimes it’s challenging to keep up with everything that is going on…Sure this could sound like an excuse, but the reality is that business continuity is everywhere. The news, entertainment, day-to-day routines, the...
When you ask your IT person if he or she is confident the business continuity, backup, and disaster recovery plans they have in place are sufficient, do they often reply with, “Everything is okay?” Does this response give you confidence? Do you take their word for it?...
On April 25 a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked Nepal, killing over 7,000 people and leaving many more people homeless, injured, sick, and stranded with nothing. The images that we’re seeing on television and online are shocking and heart-wrenching. People –...
The convergence of voice, video, and networking technologies continues to drive the consolidation of enterprise technical infrastructures in the private sector, creating significant savings as the total cost of ownership of the data center continues to decline....
Pesticides. Schools. Children. Daycares. People. Cockroaches. These words just don’t go together. Now imagine you’re a parent of a child who attended a local Ottawa, Ontario school that was sprayed with a pesticide that is considered toxic and banned for indoor use....
As I step down as chairperson of the Disaster Recovery Journal’s Editorial Advisory Board (EAB), I have been thinking about what I could share that would benefit new conference attendees and professionals growing their business continuity knowledge base. If you are...
Change. Change is a good thing. But sometimes it can be a challenge to keep up with the latest changes, trends, ideas, practices and technologies in our industry. Ours is a very fluid and dynamic industry – there are always new ideas, practices, tools and...
We live in the era of instant access – always on. If a website takes too long to load, we instantly move on. If an ATM doesn’t dispense cash, it’s unacceptable. Not only have our expectations risen to astronomical heights, but so has our dependence on technology. If...
A study conducted by Osterman Research found that 43 percent of employees have accessed sensitive corporate data on their personal mobile devices while on an unsecured network at places such as airports or restaurants. Even if your organization has a secure digital...
Are businesses prepared for skyrocketing energy costs to combat extreme heat? Can Midwestern farmers handle average crop losses of up to 73 percent in the coming decades? Should businesses invest in oceanfront property that is virtually guaranteed to flood? Because of...
Managing business operational and availability risk should begin early in any application or business process lifecycle. Engage ITIL’s (information technology infrastructure library) service model to ensure that disaster recovery (DR) risks are considered from service...
Ebola, one of the latest crisis making headlines, has become a common household word these past few years. It also sent hospitals, airports, college campuses, and other public places scrambling to put together disaster plans. Today, it’s Ebola, and tomorrow it will be...
Although this topic makes people uncomfortable when discussed, it does need to be discussed. While you have a higher chance of being hit by lightning than being involved in an active shooter incident (or “active slaughter incident” as Lt. Col. Dave Grossman calls it),...
In the early 1990s I spent several years as the director of emergency services for one of the largest federal and state office complexes in the Midwest, and within a few weeks of taking the position I found myself filling in on a weekend shift for one of my officers....
Gen. Eric Shinseki, retired chief of staff of the US Army and former secretary of veteran affairs said once, “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” Government leaders have wrestled with that paradox. Environmental circumstances demand...
DRJ Spring World 2015 attracted more than 1,100 industry practitioners, speakers, and exhibitors from around the globe to Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort in Orlando, Florida March 22-25, 2015. More than 900 paid attendees took part in the three-day event, featuring...
Dr. Nancy Welch is a district health director for the Virginia Department of Health. She has served in that role since 1976, first at the Allegheny Health District and currently at the Chesapeake and Western Tidewater Health Districts. Dr. Welch earned her medical...
It was quite a winter in much of the US. A record number of storms rolled across the south and pumped up though New England. Boston had no place to put all the snow. We have had our share of cold and snow in the northern part of New York. I’m going to tell you about...
We live in a highly connected society. It seems we’re never able to truly disconnect from the continuous barrage of news and updates. It would seem logical that with this continual news stream hitting our computers, smartphones, tablets, televisions and radios that we...
What do you think about when you turn on your tap to fill your coffee pot or to run a hot bath? Likely not much. You turn on the tap and the water comes out – perfectly clear and abundant water flows easily from your taps. But this easy and abundant water is...
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Data Loss When it comes to data loss, it’s not a matter of if, but when. At some point, we’ve all lost data – either at work or on our personal laptop. Perhaps a file didn’t save properly or perhaps we didn’t schedule regular...
On-the-fly application drills save IT resources and man hours Disasters are inevitable and can disrupt business operations, resulting in direct revenue loss. Whether business operations are compromised because of an unplanned telecom outage, extreme weather, data...
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning Templates The fully editable and customizable templates provided below offer sample content and procedures to help jumpstart your business continuity and disaster recovery planning effort. Remember, templates are just...
“Most disasters that could happen have not happened yet.” These rather ominous words are taken from the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction Report 2015 (GAR). This report will be the focus at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in...
“In a lot of modern research in crisis management, people are looking at how communities mobilize along social networks to overcome traumatic environmental crises, like we saw with Hurricane Katrina,” said Lewis Borck, lead author of the study and a Ph.D....
New York City’s Transit Shutdown Reveals Need for Winter Preparedness The extreme winter weather New York experienced recently revealed that snowstorms can be devastating to business continuity efforts. In fact, the blizzard that swept across the Northeast on Jan. 26,...
How backup changes from physical servers to virtualized environments Backup is often at the bottom of the list for IT teams – an afterthought even – but having an effective back-up and disaster recovery plan in place means considering backup as an important...
Measles. Mumps. Rubella. It’s hard to believe that these contagious diseases could be a real threat in 2015. But with the recent measles outbreaks through-out North America and Europe, it turns out that we’ve got a new threat to our health and well-being. According to...
In the Internet world today, data centers hold a very important position. You cannot opt for a hosting service in a hurry. You need to give it thorough thought because there are many factors you need to bear in mind before you start looking into a data center....
How often do you think about your employee’s mental and emotional well-being? Do you talk to your employees to make sure that they are “okay”? What will you do if you learn that one of your employees is dealing with a personal tragedy? Do you encourage your employee...
“This is a major, potentially historic snowstorm for the Northeast and easily the biggest of the 2014-15 winter season so far,” said weather.com meteorologist Chris Dolce. “Expect extreme impacts from eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey through New...
From hurricanes, wildfires and floods, to brown-outs and network failures, disasters – whether they are natural or manmade, innocent or malicious, are going to occur. The ability to protect against, while ensuring the ability to recover quickly from such outages and...
An early warning system uses wireless network sensors that can provide a few seconds to tens of seconds warning prior to any disaster. The warning messages can be used to reduce damage, costs, and casualties in an earthquake. The network sensors are distributed over...
Workplace violence is a very hot topic right now. Whether you’re thinking of the recent shootings at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris, France, the shootings of two Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers in Edmonton, Alberta, the attacks against nurses and...
With record-breaking storms shutting down cities across the U.S. in 2014, many businesses have found themselves dealing with weather-related repercussions over and over again. No part of the country is immune to natural disasters. They have the ability to effect all...
You can save money and gain tremendous IT agility, flexibility and efficiency in your data center by moving your applications to virtual server and cloud environments. However, there is significant confusion in enterprise IT management about how to meet the exacting...
Can you afford to manage a business without knowing the risks? Of course not. But suppose you decide – for whatever reason – to not take risk management very seriously. What could happen? Naturally, your business could fail; that’s probably the worst case. Your...
Operational risk management (ORM) is more than knowing how to evaluate risk. It is a continuously-repeated process which includes risk assessment, risk decision-making, and implementation of risk controls that result in risk acceptance, mitigation, or avoidance. ORM...
"Public education is probably the most important thing." "Even a few minutes can make a difference." These are two very profound statements from Garry Rogers, a research scientist at the Geological Survey of Canada. Rogers was talking about the...
I’m sure I write this at the start of every new year: Wow! Time sure does fly when you’re having fun! At the start of this bright new year, I’d just like to take a moment to thank you for your continued support and in believing in what we do at DRJ. This is the time...
We’ve always done it that way.” The periodic occurrence of these words within a business continuity management program (BCMP) should prompt program stakeholders to consider whether an opportunity for improvement is presenting itself. Business continuity, like all...
In late 2005, I attended an executive briefing about earthquake risk in Southern California. The presenter was Dr. Lucy Jones, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and a visiting research associate at the Seismological Laboratory of Caltech. Dr. Jones...
Adam C. Wasylyshyn is currently senior vice president and chief information officer of Watts Water Technologies. Wasylyshyn has more than 23 years of progressive executive experience within technology and operations management, profit improvements, and productivity...
It’s no secret that our climate has become increasingly volatile, producing extreme weather events more frequently and with higher intensity. When severe weather strikes, its impact can threaten the safety, functionality, and continuity of homes, businesses, and...
The situation was dire. Their colleagues had been taken hostage by an angry crowd of protesters. And, just when they thought they could take a breath and collect their thoughts, things got worse. Within minutes several Molotov cocktails had set their building ablaze....
If you’ve ever heard the adage “fail to plan, and you plan to fail,” then you have a rudimentary understanding of where the FAA failed in the air traffic control disruption experienced by Chicago airports. FAA officials should have planned for their systems to fail....
Stay in our profession for any length of time and you’ll soon get a feel for the various mindsets that often prevail throughout the populations and organizations we try so hard to serve. In some ways it’s understandable. No one wants to believe they have a need for...
With all the buzz around data protection and cloud, something seems to have been lost in space. We talk about instant, incremental, and online backups as well as data deduplication, but the focus needs to be on recovery. Doesn’t it? All of the fancy bells and whistles...
At one point your organization is going to experience some form of data loss. This can occur in a number of ways, whether through some sort of hardware or software failure, malware on your network, or an event out of your control such as a natural disaster, extended...
This summer we saw a lot of buzz around cloud, especially in the storage world. From acquisitions to price drops, to new announcements of funding and even large enterprises like Conde Nast announcing that they are closing data centers to move to the cloud, one thing...
Christmas is only a few days away. The New Year is a little over a week away. Both a busy time and time of reflection and looking forward. In keeping with this theme of looking back and ahead, we’ll use this last column of 2014 to review the themes and topics that...
On December 12, the air above and around London literally stood still…With the stoppage of flights in and out of Heathrow airport, Gatwick airport and other airports in the United Kingdom, the constant flight traffic revealed silence and amazing views. This silence...
A brick through the window. A few toppled over chairs. Garbage cans set on fire. Crowds taking over the street. At first glance it might not seem like much. But the reality for business owners is that one brick, those chairs, the fires and the crowds in the street do...
Albert Einstein said, “Information is not knowledge.” It should come as no great shock that Einstein’s wisdom has multiple applications. But nowhere is it more relevant than in emergency operations centers (EOCs) and the people who staff them. “Our EOC is truly a...
While it’s only November, the impacts of winter are being felt across North America. From record snowfalls in Buffalo, New York to unseasonable lows in other regions to strange shifts in weather from bitterly cold to pleasantly warm – everyone is feeling it. The...
Written by: Vicki Thomas Think about your company and it’s brand, product, or service. Now think of the image that you work hard to communicate with your clients, investors, and future customers. You’ve developed a marketing and communication strategy that highlights...
Written by: Vicki Thomas The White House recently revealed that in October it suffered a technology security breach. While details are thin on this actual breach, what this recent news has done is brought the topic of Internet and technology security to the forefront...
Written by: Vicki Thomas What is the Risk that comes with Trust? On the surface, things are back to normal here in Ottawa. All lock-downs have been lifted. Parliament Hill has reopened. The streets are open. The only real obvious difference are the flowers, wreaths,...
Keeping backup operations up to date and running smoothly should be a top priority for every organization. With budgets and programs robust enough to choose from the latest high-end software, networks and devices, most large corporations are able to provide peace of...
Each year, Forrester Research and the Disaster Recovery Journal team up to launch a study examining the state of business resiliency. Each year, we focus on a particular resiliency domain: business continuity, IT disaster recovery, crisis communications, or...
Written by: Vicki Thomas Typically when it comes to reading and watching news coverage of natural threats such as hurricanes and tropical storms, there is a lot of hand-wringing and questions about preparedness and communication. But just a few days after the impacts...
Enterprise data centers are moving more and more applications to innovative cloud and hybrid cloud configurations to save money, speed time to deployment, and meet demanding RTOs and RPOs. Despite these benefits however, many companies are reluctant to move their...
Written By: Vicki Thomas This past Sunday, a CBC radio program called The Sunday Edition featured an interview with Dr. Julie Jacobson, a doctor with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The topic of this interview was neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Dr....
Weeks ago, when Heartbleed hit, some companies were at greater risk of attack while others had nothing to fear. Those spared were likely immune to the bug because their networking gear did not rely on OpenSSL to secure production traffic. While Heartbleed was not...
Written by: Vicki Thomas (In a new weekly online column, we’ll be taking a look at recent major news events such as natural disasters and threats. We’ll review the news reports and provide a higher-level look at these events and provide links to the recent news...
Only half of UK organizations have a business continuity plan and this figure is significantly lower when it comes to small businesses with only 30 percent having a plan in place compared to 54 percent of medium sized businesses and 73 percent of large businesses....
Disaster Recovery Journal Fall World 2014 took place Sept. 7-10 at the beautiful Hilton San Diego Bayfront this year. More than 850 practitioners joined hundreds of exhibitors and board members for a total of 1,100 industry professionals at DRJ Fall World 2014. The...
Toledo, Ohio, July 2014 A green algae bloom, moved westward from normal wind patterns, hovered directly over the water intake to the Toledo drinking water intakes. The toxins from the algae are not removed by normal treatment processes, and otherwise normal...
Kathy Apple, MS, RN, FAAN, is the CEO of the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), a position she has held since 2001. Apple brings to the table more than 39 years of experience in nursing and regulation as well as a strong commitment to the mission of...
You would be worried if you did not have fire safety and evacuation plans in your office, so why would you not put the same risk assessment strategy in place for your data? Too many businesses do not have a disaster recovery (DR) plan, so my advice is to sit down and...
Data protection includes a broad array of activities from archiving and backups, through replication and disaster recovery; all of these activities require increasingly staggering budgets to build, maintain, and manage the infrastructure that supports them. The...
Let’s face it. Cyber attackers hold the competitive edge. They have a higher motivation than the average IT professional. The salaried IT guy spends his days focused on keeping the organization productive and at the end of the day wants to get home to his family. The...
Business continuity planning software can add significant value if it complements a strong program that has management support, competent personnel, and the information necessary to establish requirements, identify strategies, and document plans. While software will...
Why is it that so few small businesses prepare for emergencies? Or is that even the right question? Maybe the question should be more along the lines of “why do so few small businesses focus on preparedness in response to the avalanche of messages prompting them to do...
The skies darken and warning sirens wail in the distance. People scramble to their shelters. Several of the curious are standing at their windows or doorways hoping to catch a glimpse of the incoming cone of devastation or thinking they may be able to film it and post...
Are you interested in learning more about Disaster Recovery Journal Editorial Advisory Board (EAB)? The EAB consists of both practitioners and vendors who provide strategic direction to DRJ staff regarding the focus, format, and content of the magazine, Website, and...
Fires. Floods. Hurricanes. Earthquakes. Unfortunately these types of natural disasters are happening all over the world, but it seems with very little attention. Perhaps this is because we’re becoming more used to natural disasters or maybe it’s because most people...
Can your business afford downtime? While the obvious, likely answer is “no,” the more important question is, “Has your business clearly defined the true cost of significant downtime?” We are not just talking about an hour without Internet access or a half-day without...
On the mighty Yukon River, residents of the remote Athabascan village of Galena (traditionally a fur trading and Cold War defense community) encountered abnormal spring weather in 2013 due to an excessively late thaw, which lead to 30 miles of the river being backed...
Master data is the information underpinning enterprise-wide operations and can include supplier information, software applications, employees, locations, and resources. Creating a master data management (MDM) capability has many challenges, however, including...
High-profile disasters like Hurricane Sandy are the consummate wake-up call for companies to finally get serious about backup and recovery. Yet as organizations look for help preparing for big, unforeseen events, they often overlook recovery practices better suited to...
Most of the medium and large exploration and production (E&P) companies today leverage shared services and outsourcing as a means to reduce cost and drive efficiencies in delivering basic information technology (IT) infrastructure and software services. At the...
Written By: Vicki Thomas (In a new weekly online column, we’ll be taking a look at recent major news events such as natural disasters and threats. We’ll review the news reports and provide a higher-level look at these events and provide links to the recent news...
If you’ve been in or even around the emergency management profession for any length of time you’ve probably heard the old joke: “What’s the difference between an emergency and a disaster? It’s an emergency when it happens to someone else and it’s a disaster when it...
The Red Cross: One of the most recognized symbols in the entire world. The American Red Cross is a bright light in the midst of all types of darkness when disaster strikes. Americans are fortunate to have the opportunity to be part of such an incredible organization....
Emergency management plays a significant role in the hospitality industry. Providing the highest levels of safety standards and security ensures good marketing for the hotels by preventing an accident before it becomes a major issue causing loss of life and property....
Although natural disasters are sometimes unavoidable, we have come a long way in being able to better prepare for them. Mobile devices, for one, have revolutionized the way we can communicate and get information during times of emergency. New technologies and...
It’s storm season yet again. But we begin this season with different feelings than we’ve had in the past. The nation’s Midwest and northern regions experienced one of the coldest and snowiest winters in history; the West Coast registered some of the warmest weather...
One overlooked key to a successful corporate disaster recovery programs is to effectively integrate business continuity plans into existing community based emergency operations strategies. There is no better way to assure both corporate and community resiliency then...
The industrial uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is the foundation of an emergency power system. Unlike the commercial UPS designed to protect critical IT loads, the industrial UPS protects critical processes, control systems, and fire/life safety systems. For...
Disaster recovery is defined as the policies and processes that are put together in order to keep the IT or the technology infrastructure functioning after or during a natural or human-induced disaster. Data center managers a long time ago realized the dependence of...
A new handbook on Cyber Risk Oversight, designed to provide corporate directors with expert guidelines to improve their cybersecurity oversight, has been published by the American International Group (AIG), the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), and...
Organizational resiliency has always been about building a sustainable program and maintaining it via tests and exercises. However, with growing IT and the need for changes, disaster recovery (DR) is becoming a missing link which is forgotten time and time again....
Private and public sector organizations continually realize significant security and disaster recovery command, control, and communications (C3) impacts resulting from a lack of actionable governance and processes. Diminished communications between operations staff...
High-profile security breaches and NSA spying scandals dominated the news in 2013, bringing data protection issues to the top of everyone’s mind. As this news broke, people and businesses began to question their strategies and procedures for storing large amounts of...
Today’s business environment is ripe for marketing disasters due to its dependence on technology, the speed of communication, susceptibility to natural forces, the growth of consumerism, and an increasingly litigious society. Additionally, a single hurricane or...
How to Incorporate a Timed-Phase Checklist Into Your Hurricane Response Plans This Summer Ten named storms. Four hurricanes. One intense (Category 3-4-5) hurricane. That is what some hurricane experts are predicting for this year’s season. The increasing likelihood of...
If we can glean anything from this past winter and spring, it’s that weather is becoming extremely volatile and more severe. Not only that, but regions are experiencing weather they’ve rarely ever had to worry about, such as the ice storms that hit Georgia last...
An event that affects the company occurs: a rep from IT comes to the table as a responder for security related questions … they said we’ve been hacked and records have been compromised? Even more helpful, if you could both see the disaster, let alone understand...
For anyone living in an area with hot summers, the idea of owning your own pool is an attractive proposition. Having convenient access to cool water can make the summer more bearable, and it will increase the value of your home. But this upgrade comes at a price – not...
For most business continuity programs, the response to an actual event is pretty straightforward: evaluate the impact and, if warranted, activate the related plan. What can be less straightforward is the response to an anticipated event. These are situations in which...
In responding to numerous critical incidents and mass casualty events over the past 20 years, we have observed one unwavering constant, irrespective of the type of crisis. In the immediate aftermath, what people most want and need is information. If there is even the...
Many organizations are dealing with the topic of succession planning. This is probably something which all of the readers of this article are familiar. You know, looking across an organization and taking note of staff members who are nearing the wonderful stage of...
Most recovery plans include off-site IT or data tests which involve recovering key systems and data from an off-site location. These tests protect critical information but overlook vital resources that keep your business going after a disruption has occurred such as...
I want to talk about disasters and movies. I’m not talking about movies that were disasters, like “Mars Needs Moms.” I want to talk about the similarities between preparing for a disaster and preparing for a movie. Preparing for a movie? No, I don’t mean stocking up...
You’d think that with the right intentions and a careful, attentive execution, your business continuity plan would be a success, wouldn’t you? Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Often the smartest professionals prepare what seems to be a perfect approach for...
You, the readers of Disaster Recovery Journal, represent a broad range of disciplines – not only business continuity planning, but also the related areas of risk management, disaster recovery, emergency management, business resilience, audit, strategic planning,...
I don’t know about you, but I kind of miss summer. The long relaxing days, the quieter days at the office, the long weekends and vacations. There is something to be said for the time to sit back and appreciate how lucky we are professionally and personally. It’s also...
I used to do the Telegraph crossword years ago, after my mother-in-law got me into it (one of the two things for which she is to be applauded – the other being her daughter, obviously). Whilst I wouldn’t claim to be an expert, I did go from not having the faintest...
The Business Continuity Institute is launching a new service to business continuity professionals with its ‘Working Paper Series’. On a quarterly basis, the BCI will publish a review paper on an issue that has been raised as an area of concern by business...
PPBI as many of you know created an industry award to recognize some of those whom we consider are “Best in Class.” The PPBI Best Practices Award has been a tradition at DRJ since 2002. Past recipients include Dr. Richard Klasco (our first recipient) for his response...
Strategic BCP was the star of the show at the 2014 Business Continuity Institute North America Awards as they celebrated victory in two award categories – Business Continuity Product of the Year and Industry Personality of the Year. The ceremony was held on the March...
Spring World 2014 marked the 50th conference put on by Disaster Recovery Journal. This conference was held March 30-April 2, 2014, in Orlando, Florida at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort. DRJ Spring World 2014 attracted more than 1,250 industry practitioners, speakers...
A parent’s worst fear is that a disaster can strike that will affect their family, and I believe this concern is fully understandable. After working as a disaster recovery specialist for several years, I have seen just how much a community can change after being hit...
Many corporations have launched major enterprise content man-agement (ECM) projects over the last few years that have had mixed results. Common issues include exceeding timelines and budgets, failing to meet the user expectations that were set, and reductions from the...
When was the last time someone experienced a “good disaster?” By definition, the two terms seem mutually exclusive. Many popular thesauri list synonyms that include calamity, catastrophe, defeat, failure, and fiasco among many others. Conversely, the antonyms, or...
Leading a disaster recovery team has numerous challenges and responsibilities. Some are quite evident to the everyday observer. These include the well-documented recovery plans, exercise schedules, training programs, and overall awareness. The responsibility of...
$18 billion dollars. That’s the number estimated in damages caused by Hurricane Sandy just in the state of New York alone. With the unexpected turns that transpired amidst the super storm, all businesses were reminded of the importance of business resiliency. While...
Eric Borenstein ([email protected]) is president and executive director of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. He holds a degree in business administration with a concentration in arts management from the State University of New York. His career has...
If you haven’t started using data recovery intelligence yet to elevate IT infrastructure uptime, then it may be time to begin. With the advent of recovery tracking technology to identify system failures throughout the enterprise, organizations now have the ability to...
Most organizations have developed business continuity and emergency preparedness plans by virtue of necessity, with many of them taking the form of thick binders, flipbooks, and extensive Web pages. While these materials are intended to help save lives, mitigate...
It’s safe to say that most of the country has experienced extremely volatile weather within the last few years. Research shows that weather patterns are, and will continue to be, increasingly volatile due to changing climate trends. Whether it’s dauntingly cold...
Many larger companies which have Business Continuity Management systems produce or deliver products. Failure to deliver as a result of any interruption will very likely impact upon the business financially and could ultimately put companies out of business. Is there...
Design of disaster recovery (DR) solutions is sometimes defined as the art of balancing the cost of disruption against the cost of recovery. This simple and elegant definition often masks the true complexity of DR. Cost of disruption is rarely measured solely in terms...
Organizational buy-in is critical to the success of your business continuity management system (BCMS) implementation efforts. Getting all stakeholders on board at the outset will help gain the support to conduct research and follow up on findings collected. Support...
NEW TECHNOLOGY Technological progress is a wonderful thing. It allows us to change the world more with each passing year. We have instant communications, unbelievably fast data-processing, advanced materials, and design capabilities that yesterday’s engineers could...
When a major storm or natural disaster erupts, today’s businesses and organizations often can’t respond fast enough. For organizations, this could cause significant process disruptions and concerns for employees, even if IT systems stay up. It usually takes a...
Time is a funny thing – when we’re looking forward to an event it seems to drag on but conversely when we’re busy working with our heads down, time seems to pass at lightning speed. Now that we’ve just wrapped up our 50th show, time has slowed down a bit for us here...
Atmospheric, geological, and hydrological changes are the main causes of natural disasters. In recent decades natural disasters have increased, causing loss of life, physical damages, and economic loss. Developing countries are most affected by the disasters because...
For tax professionals during tax season, no two words evoke more dread than “system downtime.” Whether caused by power outage or software glitch, downtime is more than an inconvenience – it’s a completely preventable source of lost profits and enormous...
This leads me to the contention that perhaps there is something more fundamental that is missing in the way business continuity is being marketed and perceived by potential clients! That missing link, I will argue, is none other than a lack of focus on a...
For those involved in business continuity, the attacks were a turning point. While this industry has witnessed and prepared for numerous disasters of varying magnitudes, the 9/11 terrorist attacks brought up issues that had never been considered. With the fifth...
Storage networking has come a long way in a very short time. Until recently, storage area networks (SANs) were limited to single corporate sites, but, today, SAN extension is hot. Perhaps as many as 70 percent of the world’s Fortune 1000 companies rely on...
For any business or organization, being prepared means ensuring a constant and uninterruptible source of power to remain up and running. Although we will always have to “batten down the hatches” and evacuate until threatening weather passes, businesses...
We recently marked the anniversaries of several major disasters in our history. Each of these events had a profound affect on the contingency planning industry. On Sept. 11, the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks was recognized. This somber anniversary...
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) looked around for a standardized method of dealing with “incidents” and settled on ICS. The incident command system has been in development since the 1970s. Its...
PPBI was proud to present the Best Practices Award in March to Brandon Bond of Kaiser Permanente and in September to Rushdi A. Ariss and Ed Gabriel of Disney Worldwide Services. The deed of gift for this award reads, “This award may be given to an individual, a...
The over-representation of elderly loss of life during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita is consistent with loss on a global level. People over age 60 made up 15 percent of the New Orleans population and 75 percent of bodies found after Katrina. Forty percent of all bodies...
Data located in remote sites, home offices and laptops sits outside the central network. So called “edge data” comprises more than 60 percent of critical business data. A study by the Strategic Research Corporation estimates that 75 percent of this data is...
Most organizations take time every so often to look at who they are, where they are, who they want to be, where they want to be, and how they are going to get there. Inventing the future through corporate business planning has received significant attention at DRI...
One of the most pressing challenges for IT managers today is maintenance. How do you maintain and manage your UPSs, power distribution units, air conditioning, gen-sets, and other critical infrastructure systems? How much maintenance is enough maintenance? One of the...
In this article, I draw on some of the lessons my bank learned from last year and offer some recovery tips for other financial institutions. My advice is meant to apply not only to hurricanes, but for any type of natural disaster – such as tornadoes, floods,...
More than 1,275 attendees joined expert speakers and exhibitors for a total of 1,675 people at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina for the Disaster Recovery Journal Fall World 2006 conference Sept. 17-20. More than 1,275 attendees joined expert speakers and...
During the Disaster Recovery Journal’s 35th semi-annual conference in San Diego this September, quite a few of the speakers referred to the “crisis management plan.” This led me into having a number of discussions with various conference attendees...
Pandemics are among the natural disaster threats that have been recently added to the list of serious potential threats to business continuity as well as the health and safety of employees. It is also one of the most ancient risks that humans have endured on planet...
The development of regional public/private partnerships within the financial sector is the latest example of this leadership. ChicagoFIRST formed in 2003 as the first such regional partnership, building relationships among its competitor-members and between the...
There is nothing wrong with disaster recovery; it remains an integral part of business continuity. But disaster recovery is only one part of a true business continuity plan, and, I contend, only an enterprise plan is a true business continuity plan. Business...
From architecture and space planning to equipment selection and installation, financial planning and construction management, to operations management, this article covers some of the steps that could be involved with architecting, engineering, and constructing a...
In an effort to learn more about the current efforts of preparedness planning for pandemic threats we conducted the Pepperdine University/DRJ Avian Flu Preparedness survey at DRJ Spring World 2006. Pepperdine, DRJ: 2006 Pandemic Preparedness Survey Results By ROBERT...
In October, 2005, Gartner partnered with Disaster Recovery Journal to conduct a survey on the topic of business continuity management and disaster recovery. 2005 BCM/DR Survey Results From Gartner, DRJ By ROBERTA J. WITTY, CISSP In October, 2005, Gartner conducted a...
Whether using a service provider or going in-house, disaster recovery comes down to flexible, well managed practices. Tape vaulting services from business continuity service providers (BCPs) have traditionally provided the last line of defense for many companies’...
If 2004 was the year of the monkey, then 2005 must have been the year of the disaster. The year began with the aftermath and recovery of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Indonesia and other surrounding countries. The year that followed included...
Managing the availability of mission critical systems requires an understanding of the risks and costs of losing access to business critical information or services balanced against the cost of achieving a certain level of availability. That balance is shifting toward...
Can small businesses recover from significant disasters? The answer depends on a number of variables such as the size of the business, its location, its financial strength, and the direct and indirect effects of the event. Did you know there were approximately 22.9...
As I am writing this column, I find it difficult to settle on one topic. There have been so many recent events that have caught my eye and are relevant to the business continuity field. It seems there is a new disaster or development every day in the newspapers and on...
I was coming home from the gym when I heard a news report on the radio. It was a typical report about tornados that had touched down earlier that day. The reporter was giving the lead in to the story before the broadcast of a statement from a weather “expert.” I was...
The best disaster recovery (DR) plan becomes problematic if little or nothing is done to prevent or limit the impact of disasters before they occur. Disaster recovery plans are strengthened by a pre-disaster program of physical security in place prior to the advent of...
An influenza pandemic presents a unique threat to businesses and a unique challenge for continuity planners. The purpose of this article will be to discuss approaches to the kinds of challenges presented by an influenza pandemic and presenting ways to address those...
At the DRJ Fall World 2005 conference a group met to review the Generally Accepted Practices (GAP) document relating to “Developing Business Continuity Strategies.” This was shortly after Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest and costliest hurricanes in history....
Current information suggests the Avian flu H5N1 could in all likelihood mutate into a communicable virus among humans. Rather than the limited geographical targets of a natural disaster or terrorism, where the majority of the damage would be to infrastructure and...
The passage on the left was written in the late 1980s after a series of disasters thrust the issue of corporate crisis management onto center stage. With the Exxon-Valdez spill, the Bhopal India chemical release, the Tylenol tamperings, and the space shuttle disaster,...
Most people are aware that the National Incident Management System/Incident Command System (NIMS/ICS) was developed, refined, and is used heavily by public sector entities. These include the federal Department of Homeland Security, state and county Emergency...
As gulf coast businesses evaluate the effectiveness of their disaster recovery plans after Hurricane Katrina, a major area of focus will no doubt be data protection. As most know, a solid and secure data back-up procedure is a necessary part of any disaster recovery...
If you work in business continuity long enough, you will see new threats appear and become the focus of this year’s conferences, sales pitches, and marketing. Some of this is justified and a correct reaction to a new threat. Others are hype and in an industry led by...
Server relocations and data center consolidation can deliver significant benefits – including enhanced business continuity, optimized disaster recovery schemes, cost savings, better service management, and improved regulatory compliance. But the risk associated with...
Virtualization technology presents a classic dilemma for IT departments. On the positive side, virtualization offers clear economic and operational benefits for consolidating servers, supporting legacy applications, and managing pre-production test environments. Yet...
Consider this scenario. At least one-third of your employees have called in sick over the past two weeks. Another 15 percent of your employees cannot return to work due to caring for other sick family members, closure of schools, or closure of daycare facilities....
Concerns over a possible pandemic continue to capture the attention of almost every segment of society. In recent months, experts have warned that the world is overdue for a pandemic occurrence. The last severe one struck the United States in 1918, with milder...
Kelvin “Kelly” Kelkenberg serves as director of the National Preparedness Division of the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency for Region IV. Kelkenberg oversees the region’s Continuity of Operations Program, Remedial Action Management...
I’ve been in the business continuity planning field for about a dozen years. During that time I’ve read a plethora of material on BCP. For the most part it boils down to one or more “best practices,” with the author focusing in on one or two approaches that may work....
While there has been significant progress in the reconstruction effort, the amount of work left to do is astounding. To date, a major challenge to reconstruction is coordinating the efforts of groups in the private and public sectors involved in the process, as well...
Fortunately, the American Red Cross and the Federal Emergency Management Agency were able to develop a program with their corporate partners that literally brought the masses in off the streets overnight. Through the American Red Cross’ Special Transient...
Even two weeks after it made landfall and more than 70 miles inland, Hurricane Katrina’s destructive force was evident. Driving through Baton Rouge, large trees were uprooted or snapped in two, signs were battered, and utility crews worked to repair...
At first glance, nothing seemed unusual. But on second glance, I discovered the reason for her willingness to be at the end of the line. The lady was “with child” and apparently felt unable to keep up. Rather than slow others down, or worse, be trampled,...
Observing the progression of contact paths for an individual shows as the number increases, our availability decreases. However, it’s only natural to think the more devices I have, the more ways someone can get a hold of me. The reality, unfortunately, is...
Government Cracks Down on Inadequate Security Policies The Federal Trade Commission, state attorney’s general offices, and other state and federal regulatory agencies are increasing their scrutiny of data security practices,- and have even fined companies such...
Having determined these impacts, the next step is to consider the risks involved due to these impacts. Having done business impact and risk analysis, every organization needs to put in place a sound, well-thought-of business continuity/disaster recovery plan. These...
Protecting your business with an easy to set-up telework program A telework program is most often thought of as a way for employers to help cut down on commuting traffic, boost productivity, and attract and retain qualified workers. However, the inherent...
“This was the largest conference we have ever had,” said Bob Arnold, vice president of Disaster Recovery Journal. “We are quite impressed with the growing size and diversity of the business continuity industry. “It’s not just IT...
This year’s show was held at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort. We had more than 1250 attendees onsite and an additional 450 exhibitors, speakers and board members. Approximately 60 percent of these attendees were attending a DRJ conference for the first...
That show reminded me that about a month ago I received a letter from one of my credit card companies. It advised me that someone illegally accessed their files. There was the possibility that my private and personal information has been exposed. They suggested I...
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