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This week we present our annual success story issue, featuring articles that show how business continuity plans helped - or could have helped - businesses facing actual disruption scenarios. We often find value in seeing how someone else handled a situation we could face; we hope you will find some tips to apply to your own plans.

Here's a two-part story that shows why intellectual property theft can be a genuine business continuity threat and offers some crisis management lessons from a real-life IP theft situation. (Item #1)   What can other companies learn from the Mattel crisis? (Item #2)   When pornographic spam threatened his company's reputation, a CSO got a lesson in calling for outside help. (Item #3)  

AT&T has its business continuity planning down cold. (Item #4)   This San Francisco firm's considerable input to its business continuity plan saved the day. (Item #5)   Effective business continuity planning has allowed clothes retailer Primark to restart its supply chain 48 hours after fire destroyed its principal stock warehouse last Tuesday. (Item #6)  

As always, we look forward to hearing about your concerns with regards to business continuity. If you have a topic you'd like to see covered, please email me at [email protected]

Best Regards,

Bob Mellinger
President
Attainium Corp

Quote of the Week

"Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity."

- Oprah Winfrey -

Articles

1. Intellectual property theft and business continuity: a case study
The story you are about to read is true. It is about intrigue, betrayal and cunning and it begins innocently enough one Friday afternoon. It shows why intellectual property theft can be a genuine business continuity threat and offers some crisis management lessons from a real-life IP theft situation.
http://www.continuitycentral.com/feature0367.htm (Part one)
http://www.continuitycentral.com/feature0370.htm (Part two)

2. Lessons from the Mattel crisis
Facing a major crisis isn't easy for any company, says one public relations expert, and it's a lesson toy maker Mattel has learned the hard way over the past few months. Can other companies learn from the crisis as well?
http://disaster-resource.com/newsletter/subpages/v206/newsclip6v206.htm

3. At War with the Spammers
There are times when asking for assistance is the practical thing to do. You can't always handle everything on your own. One of the main ways the writer learned this was back in the mid-1990s, when his company was struggling through a series of disruptive attacks caused by spammers who were trying to profit by driving Web traffic to pornographic websites-and using his company's good name to do so.
http://www.csoonline.com/article/221070/At_War_with_the_Spammers

4. Corporate disaster response team hailed as model of efficiency
AT&T's disaster response team is being hailed by government officials as a model of efficiency, based on its work to restore communications to New York City in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and its more recent repairs of infrastructure damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
http://govexec.com/dailyfed/0606/060906j1.htm

5. Schwabs Success Story
Still basking in the success of his firm's complete recovery from the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, Jeffery Lyons, Disaster Recovery Planner for Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., recently agreed revealed some important aspects of the contingency plan they developed, some examples of how that plan held up during the actual emergency, and also some considerations for the plan's continued development in the future.
http://www.drj.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=391&Itemid=450

6. Blaze-hit Primark back on track as continuity plan saves the day
The retailer, which has outsourced its supply chain operations to TNT, maintained the flow of critical stock to its stores thanks to TNTFashion Group IT director Jim Flood's decision to bypass the usual distribution channels. Primark's success in restoring its systems highlights the need to ensure suppliers have adequate business continuity plans.
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2005/11/07/212826/blaze-hit-primark-back-on-track-as-continuity-plan-saves-the.htm