Identity theft now costs businesses billions of dollars each year, and it's on the rise. No business seems to be immune, from sole practitioners to large corporations. In this issue, we look at exactly what identity theft is and what you can do to prevent it. Check out these articles for some of the steps you can take to avoid becoming a victim.
June is National Safety Month and a good time to think about safety in your workplace. This issue covers workplace injuries, active shooter preparations, fire, medical and other emergencies. If you haven't visited the topic of workplace safety in a while, June is a good time to do so, and these articles can help.
Ever since the shootings at Virginia Tech, mass notifications systems (MNS) have been evolving into tools that can help save lives and businesses. What is your method of communicating with your employees about a disaster or disruption? If you don’t have some kind of system, you should take a look at these articles that discuss these systems and how to choose them.
Even though it seems that hurricane season 2016 just ended, 2017's season started in the eastern Pacific a couple of days ago and the central Pacific and Atlantic seasons will begin June 1. While predictions indicate a less active hurricane season, we need to remember that only one storm can wipe out a business or a community. How are your preparations coming? These articles may help you solidify your plans.
You are no doubt familiar with many of the numerous laws and regulations for business continuity and disaster recovery planning. All of them, in some way, impact your BC and DR planning and may also result in liability to a company, not in compliance. In addition, now we need to consider ethical conduct and integrity planning to avoid additional liability. These articles may be able to guide you through some of the legal and ethical dangers.
This year Business Continuity Awareness Week occurs between March 15 and 19, and the theme is cyber resilience. The BCI's Cyber Resilience Report revealed that two-thirds of organizations had experienced at least one cybersecurity incident during the previous year, and 15% had experienced at least ten. So this week we'll focus on cyber resilience so you can think about what you will do to raise awareness of business continuity and the importance of cyber resilience? (Item #6 has a link to download posters to display throughout your workplace.)
How often do you exercise your business continuity plan? Have you ever done so? Most experts recommend testing and exercising (if you read Item #5 you'll see what the difference is) at least once per year for the entire plan. If you're not doing that, here's a question for you: What will you do if any part of the plan doesn't work as conceived? Will your people have the ability and confidence to go with the flow and work their way past the broken parts? The only way to know is to try out the plan and see what happens. You'll find help in this issue.
The buy-in and support of executive leadership are critical to the success of every effort. Whether you're just establishing a business continuity or disaster recovery plan or changing or adding to it, you know that you have to convince top management to support it. How do you do that? This issue discusses the many aspects of getting management buy-in.
