In the last couple of weeks the world has shown how the only predictable thing for many of us who deliver technology is the unpredictability of what we have to deal with, from the massive data breach at British Airways to the catastrophic impacts of hurricanes on both the western and eastern sides of the globe, these are incidents that we should be prepared for, the question is, are we?
If your organisation was impacted by something like a hurricane, causing flooding and power outages how would you react? If you’d suffered a data breach, what would you do? Who would you turn to? What’s the plan?
Planning for these incidents is a crucial part of modern business practice, in some cases it is mandated while in others we appreciate the value of planning and develop continuity and incident response plans. However, for some of us, we don’t have one, or if we do, we are not sure where it is, or whether it works!
So, what if you don’t have a plan, or not sure if your plan has value? Then this episode of the podcast is for you as we look at business continuity planning, with my guest continuity planning consultant Steve Lambert of Biscon Planning.
Steve has many years’ experience in the industry at both Biscon and previous to that working in local government emergency planning. In this episode Steve shares his business planning experience to outline some of the steps that you should be taking to ensure, that in the event of an “incident”, you have a plan to overcome it and not get caught out.
I chat with Steve on a range of topics, why do we need a plan at all? And how continuity planning goes beyond IT. We discuss the types of incidents you need to plan for and compare the differences between operational and enterprise risks.
We look at the evolving incident landscape and how data breach is now a key part of continuity planning. Steve then takes us through some of the steps you need to consider when building a plan, from understanding risk appetite, to impact assessment. We also look at the importance of testing plans and crucially how it’s not only your plans, but those of your suppliers, if they have a critical failure do you know how it impacts you?
We wrap up by looking at some practical steps, including how Biscon can help you with a free review and ways you can highlight the importance of planning across your business.
The importance of incident planning cannot be underestimated, and Steve provides some great tips on how to build and test your plans.
To find out more about Biscon and their services you can visit them at https://www.biscon.co.uk/ and follow them on twitter @bisconplanning
If you’d like to test how you would respond to an incident, you may like to follow this scenario shared recently on the BBC’s website.
Until next time – thanks for listening
Techstringy 