Blog Archive

In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the importance of being prepared for potential incidents when sending staff abroad for work and the importance of communication.   I take a keen interest in anything that happens in Sudan. When I was 18, I spent a year there, working as an English Language teacher in a secondary

Charlie gives an insight into his thoughts on the recent CyberUK conference and discusses how cyber security has changed in recent years.   This week I have been at the CyberUK Conference in Belfast. The conference is billed as ‘the UK’s flagship cyber security event run by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)’. It is

This week’s bulletin has been provided by Gavin Watt (AMBCI) who gives some insight into the current need for business continuity in our organisations and how business continuity can be operationalised. Over the past couple of days, I have been thinking about the past few exercises with clients I have conducted, training sessions I have

Charlie discusses the issue of women being trolled online, including the type of attacks utilised and what women can do if they are being trolled. I was challenged by my wife Kim yesterday evening to write the bulletin about women and online trolling. A couple of nights ago, we listened to the BBC Newscast podcast

In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses his thoughts from his recent security conference in Rotterdam and gives an insight into the use of autonomous technology. This week, I have been in Rotterdam at the ASIS European Conference. ASIS, for those who are not familiar with the organisation, is a professional organisation for security professionals. It

This week, Charlie provides some interesting statistics around the payment of ransomware and gives an insight into the amount of money that organisations pay to these criminal gangs. This week and last week I have been umpiring cyber exercises. Both exercises involved a ransomware attack demanding a ransom. When I teach cyber incident management, one

In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses what to do in a negotiation situation with hackers, and looks at what we can learn from the situation with Royal Mail and their hackers. This week, with two of my PlanB Consulting colleagues, I assessed the response of the crisis team of a large financial organisation. As part

In today’s bulletin, Charlie discusses how you could salvage your reputation after an accusation, using Online Reputation Management (ORM) companies. Following an interview with Jonny and Louis from Status Labs – an ORM company – Charlie gives us an insight into how these companies work and the benefits of the service.  Imagine…You have been a

In today’s bulletin, Charlie gives his thoughts about Arnold Clark’s recent cyber incident and gives an insight into their response, and what we can learn from this.   For the last few weeks, I have been watching the news of the cyber-attack on Arnold Clark and thought that this week, I should write a case

Charlie talks about our responses after a disaster and addresses some misconceptions about immediate responders. I watched the footage of the response to the earthquake in Turkey with tears in my eyes. The joy of the rescuers when they save a child from the rubble, and the despair of the people who have lost their

This week, Charlie discusses the best way of utilising feedback forms after your exercises, and why they should be used in most exercises.    This is rather an obscure subject to write about, but I was inspired by our ‘lunch and learn session’. We are going to be doing a session on feedback forms and

This week, Charlie discusses the ‘cyber incident’ affecting Royal Mail and gives an insight into his recent ‘Cyber Course for Non-Cyber Roles’.    Twice this week, I delivered a day-long NCSC certified course – ‘Cyber Course for Non-Cyber Roles’ – as an in-house course for an organisation wanting to make sure that those in support

In this week’s bulletin, Charlie looks at the concept of a ‘Grey Rhino’ and how organisations should deal with them.     Over the Christmas period, I like to spend my time reading and writing, amongst all the other festivities. A couple of years ago I used the time to get the majority of my

In the first bulletin of 2023, Charlie discusses the potential issues that may arise in 2023 and how organisations may be able to approach and deal with them.   I have been doing quite a lot of reading over the Christmas holidays and have got most of the way through the “Grey Rhino – How

In this week’s bulletin, Charlie looks to 2023 and talks about what he would like to cover in next year’s bulletins.   As we come to the end of the year, and if you write regularly, then the thoughts and writing should be about what happened over the last year, as well as looking forward

In this week’s bulletin, Charlie talks about what may be useful to consider when developing objectives for your exercises, and discusses the importance of risk assessments and also teamwork.   I have been doing lots of thinking about exercises and improving the skills and capabilities of those managing incident management teams. After carrying out a

Charlie recommends a podcast series he’s been listening to recently and discusses why it is important for business continuity professionals to be aware of trolls.   This week I have been (mainly) listening to the podcast Disaster Trolls on BBC Sounds. It is an excellent exposé of UK trolls who demean and insult survivors of

In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses paying a ransom to retrieve your data and shares his research on how much data organisations have recovered in the past.   This afternoon, myself and one of the PlanB Consulting consultants, Jamie, were talking to a client about their forthcoming cyber exercise. This was the second cyber exercise

We’ve been to BCI World Hybrid 2022! In  this week’s bulletin, Charlie talks about the highlights from BCI World Hybrid 2022 and discusses the growth in the Business Continuity community.   The face-to-face conference was sold out weeks prior to the event, so there is still a strong demand to learn more about business continuity

Charlie attended The Scottish Cyber Summit earlier this week and has summarised points made by different speakers and panellists.   Yesterday, I attended the Scottish Cyber Summit in Edinburgh! So for this week’s bulletin, I will be sharing what I learnt from the event. The summit was a gathering of the ‘great and good’ of

In today’s bulletin, Charlie talks about the benefits of short exercises, particularly if you are a beginner at running exercises.   Yesterday, our Prime Minister went from being the highest in office in the country, to being a pub quiz question. Being short doesn’t necessarily mean bad, well at least in business continuity exercises. If

This week’s bulletin covers the new Cyber Security laws in America, how these incidents should be reported, and the organisations which could face the worst impact of a cyber security incident.   I have been looking through the BCT Certificate in Cyber Incident Management course materials, as I am going to have a discussion with Eamonn Keane who is

In this week’s bulletin, Charlie talks about how to rebuild your reputation after a mistake, the government being in a potential ‘downward-spiral’, and gives an insight into his army experience. Our new Prime Minister and Chancellor have not ‘hit the ground running’ and must have had a 1 or 2-day honeymoon period before having the

This week’s bulletin looks at reputation, court cases, and how to manage targeted abuse. Having previously written a case study about James Watt of BrewDog and how he handled allegations of bullying within the organisation, the BBC documentary repeating these allegations and hinting he was using his position for sexual impropriety, I was interested to read that