Roberta Witty

I am doing some research regarding when an organization should invoke their pandemic preparedness plan(s) from a business operations perspective. I’m not talking about the personal hygiene/medical aspects, but the business operations impact view. Tell me how your firm is handling the issues expressed in the questions below.
1. How do you determine when [...]

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Getting management attention and investment commitment for BCM can be hard. Linking key performance indicators to key risk indicators for resilience is an effective approach for communicating to business management the value of business continuity and resilience management, so that business management takes ownership of these programs and commits to the needed investments year over [...]

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The need for supply chain resilience could push still-unready organizations to attain business continuity management program certifications. Monitor the PS-Prep program and associated standards to ensure you are prepared.  
On 15 October 2009, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced three proposed standards that would be used by the Voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Accreditation and [...]

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At this week’s Midsize Enterprise Summit, not one hand went up when I asked the audience if they knew what PS-Prep was.  That was the main reason I wanted this session at the conference – organization certification for business continuity management is coming and few organizations – large, midsize and small in fact – know [...]

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The denial of service attack on Twitter should remind organizations that are automating their emergency call trees and crisis communications that a single end point isn’t good enough. Given the growth in social networking, more and more organizations are starting to think about leveraging these sites for emergency/crisis communications. But if it becomes your only [...]

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Last week, I attended the IntraPoint User Forum in Norway, and I came away with a real education about the extreme measures some enterprises in the oil and gas and transportation industries take to provide the safest possible environments for their workers and their customers. Just a couple of examples: tracking every single ship traveling [...]

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The recent outbreaks of the swine flu are highlighting the need for organizations to have pandemic plans that address workforce absenteeism rates of 40% or higher. There are 20 laboratory-confirmed human cases in California, Texas, Ohio, Kansas and New York. In fact, we’re in Chicago for the Gartner Business Continuity Management Summit and we’ve already [...]

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Sometimes the best things in life are still free, and good news can come from surprising sources.
On Tuesday, Rick DeLotto and I were briefed by the Sahana Project, an award winning, free and open source, web-based disaster relief management system designed to “Help alleviate human suffering and help save lives through the efficient use of [...]

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Many enterprises have successful (up-to-date and exercised) recovery plans in place for technology outages, or for a disaster that strikes the data center.  But they aren’t as prepared to handle the public communications, community/government coordiation and workforce continuity aspects of a crisis.  Recognizing that gap in their overall business resilience, a growing number of organizations are implementing [...]

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The ongoing global economic crisis is having a severe impact on business continuity management (BCM), in the United States and elsewhere. Senior managers are being downsized to cut head count and compensation costs. Recovery projects and enhancements are being delayed or canceled altogether as IT budgets are slashed. But there is some good news: Gartner [...]

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