Business Continuity Threat Assessment Be Prepared
Did the recent snowfall take you by surprise or were you fully prepared and able to carry on business as usual? Many were not!
Here a just a few of the many headlines we have seen recently regarding the bad weather and the impact on UK businesses.
BA warns of 50m bad weather costs
Coldest winter in 31 years costs small businesses 7bn
Bad weather drives HMV Christmas sales slump
Bad weather puts Christmas gifts delivery in doubt
FSB calls for emergency measures to help small businesses through cold snap
British businesses caught out by recent adverse weather
1000 additional businesses may run out of cash this winter
Snow cost Sussex 10 million a day
If you carry out a comprehensive Threat Assessment (TA) and Business Impact Analysis (BIA) you should not be taken by surprise.
But where do you start?
Threat Assessment
I have always found that the best way to identify the possible and likely threats to a business is to hold a workshop with key personnel, representing all functions of the business.
I usually break the Workshop down into Brainstorming, qualification and Probability / Impact assessment.
Brainstorming is very effective when it comes to generating a large number of ideas for the solution of a problem. You need two things for a successful Brainstorm session; open minds and a facilitator (a pen and flip chart are also essential).
The facilitator will set the scene and pose the question what are the threats or risks to xxxxx. It is important that the facilitator does not influence the input to the session too much, but they can assist to get things moving.
Simply write on the flip chart what people call out: It is probably better to nominate a scribe to jot down the notes; this will enable you to concentrate on facilitating the session and ensuring what people call out gets written down. You may also want to keep your own notes to assist the follow-up report.
When you have exhausted the Brainstorming (when no more thoughts are forthcoming) you now need to qualify and group the output of the session. It is very important that you dont qualify these during the Brainstorming session as it will slow, or completely stop, the flow.
Once you have a definitive list of the threats and risks you need to apply a criticality to each one.
Draw a quadrant on the white board with probability along one axis and impact along the other. In the top right quadrant you will have High Probability / High Impact threats and risks; these are the ones that need immediate action! Dont forget that the benefit of a sound TA will also provide preventative measures for the business.
In the bottom left you will have Low Probability / Low Impact; you might decide that these are not worth worrying too much about. If this isnt the case they are probably in the wrong place.
The remainder need to be assessed individually to determine what recovery strategies need to be in place.
A sample Threat Assessment can be found on EMAs Website.
Give it a go. You will be amazed at what comes out of this type of session.
Please look out for my article on BIA.
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