Creating a Culture of Preparedness

Emergency Management Magazine has a wonderful article about embedding the business continuity process into the culture of an organization:

Tips for Creating a Culture of Preparedness

So often, this is the hardest thing to achieve in your awareness program. There are some great insights in this article.

Business Continuity Awareness Week is coming up in March, incorporate some of this advice into your plan!

DRJ's SpringWorld 2015

DRJ's SpringWorld opens in 51 days! Mark your calendar: March 22 - 25, 2015.

http://www.drj.com/events/spring-world-2015/homepage.html

DRI's March 2015 Conferece

Just 33 days until DRI's spring conference in San Antonio! It doesn't look like my schedule will allow me to attend, but the conference looks exciting.

http://driconference.org/

Mark your calendar: March 1 - 4, 2015.

Manage Risk and Deliver Security in a Digital World

Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit

8 – 11 June 2015 | National Harbor, MD (Washington, D.C. area)

http://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/na/security/

The need for disaster recovery isn't dead

TheGuardian.com ran an article in their Small Business Money Blog about the state of disaster recovery and business continuity planning in small and medium sized businesses:

Business continuity plans: a position for recovery

A few key take-aways:

Small and medium sized business that fail to create a disaster recovery or business continuity plan are more likely to close in the first two years of operating.

"In the Aviva survey, half of SME owners questioned revealed they had no BCP in place, and a further 16% said they didn't think they needed one. Only 36% of respondents were even aware of BCPs and what they were for, while, worryingly, only a quarter (28%) of business owners said they had a BCP in place. The remaining 6% didn't know if they had a BCP or not."

I think this article demonstrates that the need for disaster recovery isn't dead. Big businesses may tout that they have mirroring or use the Cloud and have business resiliency, but there is still a lot that needs to be done ot reach small and medium sized businesses.

I think there's been a trend of some people believing that as technology improves and more business functions are automated, the role of the business continuity professional is diminishing, but that just isn't true. IT continuity isn't business continuity.