Maximum tolerable outage or MTO is a common measure in both disaster recovery and business continuity. It is the maximum amount of time a system or resource can remain unavailable before its loss starts to have an unacceptable impact on the goals or the survival of an organisation. It’s either on or off, and if…
Central business districts (CBDs) are known for the high concentration of people in them, during business hours. This makes them a special case in emergency management. There is a strong need to provide timely, clear instructions to the public in this instance in order to contain any emergency situation and to avoid complications. SydneyALERT is…
If search engine results are anything to go by, state-wide disaster plans are common currency for the largest Australian states in terms of population (New South Wales and Victoria), but not so much in evidence for others. NSW even goes one better with not just a DISPLAN, but also an EMPLAN – Emergency Plan (the…
Case histories and past experience are material for building the business case for business continuity plans. So what have the last twelve months contributed? Since the Mayan prophecies on December 21st provoked no major upsets in the world, 2012 was quiet compared to 2011. There were events like the Olympic Games and Hurricane Sandy, but…
As fields such as business continuity, risk management and security management, to name but a few, develop, they often develop different branches and specialities. With the multiplication of concepts and methods, the original discipline isn’t big enough to hold them all, or so it seems. Yet resilience management is something that bucks that trend. It…
If the names of Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen don’t immediately strike a chord, at least in business continuity, you could be forgiven. Yet their sage advice has been around for some time. It dates from 1944, when they wrote the lyrics and the music for the song “Accentuate the Positive”. How does it go?…