By David Hutchins

Source: contingencyplanning.com
Five years have passed since Hurricane Katrina, one of the most deadly and costly hurricanes on record, devastated the Gulf Coast. While the southeastern coast is still recovering from the damage caused by the 2005 hurricane season, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center is warning of a 2010 hurricane season eerily similar to 2005. Citing all-time high sea surface temperatures in key areas of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the El Niño cycle, NOAA predicts that the 2010 season will most likely …

Failure to activate BC teams and strategies could result in a serious loss of confidence and may be a serious source of embarrassment if executives attempt to fill a perceived void.
 
Article From: Continuity Insights, Brian Zawada from Avalution Consulting LLC
 
I received an e-mail right before the editorial deadline for this issue that made me scrap my original column idea and go in a different direction. That e-mail went something like this:

“Our organization has spent considerable time and effort on business continuity planning in general (an all-hazards approach), and we’ve also …

Alexandre Guindani, CBCP, SBCI
http://www.rugbrasil.com/
Ten tips to building an effective Business Continuity Program
Many people believe that the creation of a Business Continuity structure itself provides security to the enterprise and makes it safe from interruption, bringing the feeling of task accomplished.
Unfortunately, business continuity is not a mere project; it must be seen as a state of mind. Business continuity, to be truly effective, requires cultural changing.
Also, to be honest, business continuity is not fascinating, nor does it excite or engage people. And this, in my understanding, is the greatest challenge of …

By: Kathleen Lucey
(Source: http://www.continuitycentral.com)
July 13th, 2010
Just yesterday I said to a professional chef with 20+ years of high-level experience in his industry that I was beginning to feel like business continuity was becoming like cooking – everyone thinks that all they need is …

Red Flags, Threat Assessments and Connecting-the-Dots
Rick Shaw, CEO Awareity
-June 10th 2010-
Have you noticed more and more comments from the media, safety experts and government leaders are focusing on the failure of organizations to connect-the-dots and the failure to identify red flags prior to emergencies and crisis situations?
From Columbine to Virginia Tech to Fort Hood to the University of Alabama and South Hadley… challenges with red flags, threat assessments and connecting-the-dots have been going on for years; what changes do organizations need to make?
Identifying Red Flags
Why are so many red flags …

-Victoria Tozer-Pennington-
 
Erupting volcanoes do not often show up in scenario plans for financial services firms but they might do from now on.
An event such as a giant volcanic ash cloud closing the European airspace for almost a week is proof that so-called black swans – or extremely rare loss events – really do happen. The chaos caused by the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano brings home the importance of having business continuity plans in place that prepare for all eventualities.
“The volcanic ash cloud and the effect across Europe is truly …

Do’s and Don’ts for Developing an Actionable Plan on a Budget
-By Gaston Boisson, CBCP, MBCI -
April 16th 2010
 
The last decade produced multiple mass casualty events, from 9-11 to the Tsunamis in the South Pacific region, to the recent earthquake in Haiti.   These events, while tragic, have served as painful evidence that investments in governmental, organizational, and community preparedness are important and necessary. 
The Scenario
To survive a disaster, organizations must be concerned with responding to impacts to personnel, facilities, and technology. Forward thinking organizations also consider Corporate Social Responsibility and incorporate …

-Homeland Security Newswire-
Energetic and acquisitive U.K. VAR Onyx refreshes DRS proposition after recent buy-out and aims for more consolidation; company claims that many disaster recovery packages do not cater effectively for smaller firms, particularly in London
Acquisitive VAR Onyx Group is targeting more buy-outs in the business continuity arena after rolling out its SME-focused disaster recovery offering.
CRN’s Sam Trendall writes that in October, Onyx bought London-based Disaster Recovery Solutions (DRS) in a deal which gave it eighty workplace recovery sites across the United Kingdom — forty of those in the capital. It …

–By Megan Kellett, Assistant Site Editor of SearchDisasterRecovery.com–
According to a recent study by New York-based Allied Business Intelligence (ABI) Research, Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery, the global business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) market is predicted to grow from $24.3 billion in 2009 to more than $39 billion in 2015. The study has been observing the market trends for business continuity and disaster recovery since 2004, and covers BC and DR in hardware and software services, as well as trends in both enterprise and small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
Reasons for such …

– by Chris Bakowski, MBCI at Linus Information Security Solutions Pty Ltd–
As we are all aware, a Business Continuity Management plan is only effective if it accurately reflects the needs, technology and structure of the organization. But, more importantly, a Business Continuity Management plan can only be considered to be truly effective if the content and the components of the plan have been exercised.
Continuous exercising ensures that there are no gaps or issues; that the key people involved in either the Emergency Response and / or Business Recovery teams are fully …