Digital Resilience & Business Continuity Planning in the post-Covid era …
In the wake of the global Covid-19 pandemic, businesses worldwide
August 31, 2023
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In the wake of the global Covid-19 pandemic, businesses worldwide
In today’s digital landscape, protecting sensitive information and safeguarding against
More moving parts mean more chance of failure. Replace “moving
Most businesses experience change constantly. Markets, technologies, regulations and strategies
It may sound strange to talk about “touchy-feely” stuff like
Few activities and operations are truly set it and forget
Do more with less. Who hasn’t already heard that in
More moving parts mean more chance of failure. Replace “moving parts” by “comatose IT servers” and the adage still holds true.
The enemy is (largely) within, when it comes to the security of information and information systems. Knowing how and why insider threats materialise is a big step towards dealing with them.
Most businesses experience change constantly. Markets, technologies, regulations and strategies all evolve. Enterprises that stand still get left behind and disappear, one way or another.
Proverbially at least, elephants never forget. Neither does the Internet. Once information is out there, you must assume it will always be out there, and that deleting it at its source may make no difference.
Few activities and operations are truly set it and forget it. Lights-out factories like the showcase installation run by technology company Siemens are proof of concept, but still the exception.
Do more with less. Who hasn’t already heard that in business? And just because something – like disaster recovery planning and management – is vital to ensuring enterprise survival does not mean that you cannot leverage your investment to get more out of it.
It may sound strange to talk about “touchy-feely” stuff like user experience in the context of IT disaster recovery. After all, the priority is on getting systems up and running again within recovery time and recovery point objectives, rather than sitting around in focus groups discussing feelings and opinions.
IT service management changed a few years ago with the introduction of containers. They helped usher in the concept that a data centre was no longer a place with computers, but that the data centre itself was the computer.
Time is money, as they say, and it is also a key factor in IT disaster recovery. Take, for instance, the well-known recovery time objective or RTO, which defines how fast you should get back to normal operations after an IT incident.
Imagine taking your car to the garage for an urgent repair, only to be told that you’ll have to wait for week because the garage mechanics are off on a training course.
Military precision? Business descriptions? No fluff? All these qualifications have a bearing on a disaster recovery plan, but with certain conditions.
We may live in a digital age, but much of the concepts from the previous industrial era still carries through. We have virtual cloud data factories and production lines, just like their physical counterparts for making cars, furniture, aircraft and so on.
The bigger an organisation gets, the more the plans multiply. There may be plans for dealing with contingencies, crises, disasters, emergencies, pandemics, risks and who knows what else, all in addition to your business continuity plan.
It’s commonplace to see articles and discussions about cyber security and the law, but this article is not about that. It is about cyber security and law firms, those august institutions with their lawyers, barristers, and attorneys.
Artificial intelligence is finding its way into many applications and systems, so why not disaster recovery? The advantages are multiple.
The Agung volcano in Indonesia has been in the news recently. At time of writing, observers are sending back reports of clouds and glows that suggest that major eruption could be imminent.
When hackers try to penetrate your databases and IT infrastructure (or perpetrate any other cybercrime), they often plan a sequence of steps to get what they want. Individual steps may seem innocent or meaningless.
Much of business continuity today can be automated. Production lines, supplies reordering, failovers in case of problems, management reports, many of these things now work on a “set it and forget it” basis.
Linux has an enviable reputation as a secure platform for servers. But Linux the Unhackable? Certain myths persist about the inherent resistance of Linux to viruses and the superfluity of firewalls.
Business continuity is good for your business, but is it also a legal requirement? Laws and regulations differ from one country or one industry to another, although there is a basic expectation that organisations will act responsibly.
While cyber security may have you thinking in zeros and ones, and wondering which next generation firewall you should buy next, the human element is alive and well in cyber crime.
If everything is working and you have a business continuity plan in place, is there anything left to worry about? Yes!
With the aim of IT service management being to serve the business or the organisation funding the IT, it’s crucial that business requirements drive ITSM projects and procurement.
The “six degrees” concept is that you can reach any person in the world using a maximum of six personal relationships in a chain stretching from you to the person you want to reach.
In principle, every IT system needs to be secure. In practice, some IT systems are less secure than others.
So, it’s that time of the year again, when we look back over the last 12 months in business continuity to see… nothing?
Does Father Christmas know just how exposed his operation is? With one of the largest address books ever conceived (names, addresses, gift preferences of billions of people) and a seasonal workforce of elves that may or may not have been vetted before hiring, Santa’s gift selection, preparation and delivery system may be hugely at risk.
Meet Sophia, who has Saudi-Arabian nationality. There’s nothing unusual about that, except that Sophia is a robot.
The idea behind threat hunting is that some attackers are getting too smart for current IT security technology.
In theory, IT service management should contain sprawl, limiting or preventing the spread of underutilised IT assets.
“Yes, we have a business continuity plan”. Every enterprise wants to hear this from its suppliers, especially the key suppliers.
First, there was the virtual machine. Then came the container. Now, welcome to the unikernel, the latest initiative for atomising computing.
Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Collectively known as FUD, these items skew rational thinking, panic otherwise sensible people, and throw sizeable spanners in the works of business continuity planners.
Will it ever go away? The basic password is still alive and well.
Bankruptcy per se is not necessarily the end of an enterprise, as several high-profile phoenixes rising from the ashes have shown.
It’s not paranoia, they really are out to get you. When the very organisations promoting IT security manage to botch it up, it’s difficult to have confidence in anything anymore.
You may well have heard the story of the person trying to streamline business operations and driving past huge, separated grain silos one day, which reminded him of the mentalities and divisions he was trying to overcome back in the office.
It’s a fact of business life that customers, markets, and industry commentators only see your brand, and not the suppliers who provide the materials, components, or products behind it.
People – “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them” might be the motto for many enterprises and their chief information security officers (CISOs).
Sometimes in business continuity we end up with such a fierce focus on actions inside the enterprise that we neglect actions directed towards the outside world, and specifically towards our customers.
Hollywood (once again) got there first. Remember those films in which shadowy figures hiss “Trust no-one!” before vanishing from the scene?
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As an executive in any business, it is understandable that you want to ensure it is 100% safe, because your business is only as strong as its weakest link.
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