Blog Archive

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

This is part 2 of last week’s bulletin, discussing the dire impacts of a cyber attack on healthcare services. Communications Communications are incredibly important in a healthcare setting, especially as they are looking after many patients. Any incident, changes, or location swap affecting the patients must be rapidly communicated to the patient’s loved ones or

After conducting cyber incident exercises in a hospital this week, Charlie is sharing his key take aways and research, looking specifically at healthcare organisations. Earlier this week at PlanB Consulting, my colleagues and I wrote and then delivered two exercises for a hospital in the UK. We delivered the first exercise for the Gold Team

This week, Charlie talks about operational resilience in today’s world and why it is important to become resilient in order to survive. I believe right now there has never been a more important time for organisations to be resilient. The certainties of the last 10 years are shifting like sand under us. Interest rates are

In the age of camera phones and social media, it has become harder for public figures to hide from the public eye. Charlie discusses how two different Prime Ministers handled leaked pictures from a crisis communications angle, and what lessons BC professionals can learn from this. I have been following the story of Finnish Prime

If you’re thinking about buying software for your business continuity roll out, this bulletin discusses what you have to be aware of and be ready to deal with before you make the plunge. I am a great fan of business continuity software, I love how your whole BCMS is in one place, you are able

This week, Charlie discusses the evidence behind cyber attacks indirectly causing the death and injury of people. Also, the importance of exercises to train employees on how to work efficiently during a cyber attack. This week there was a cyber attack on NHS 111, with the hackers targeting its software supplier, Advanced. As healthcare is

After witnessing a near miss incident during a fishing competition, Charlie reiterates the importance of health and safety checks, risk assessments, and great response plans. A couple of weeks ago, I was involved in a near miss accident at the Isle of Coll fishing competition, so I wanted to share a few thoughts on this

This week, Charlie discusses why using a simpler incident response model is better suited for clients. For a long time, I have been working on developing and refining a framework for responding to and managing incidents. The framework has to be simple, as those who are going to use it will likely have limited training,

This week, Charlie discusses pandemic plans that were suggested back in 2006, and how they compare to the actions that were taken during the height of the COVID pandemic. I came across the booklet ‘Flu Pandemic Guidelines for Businesses’ produced by Survive when we were moving our office. I thought it might be interesting to

This week, Charlie discusses the big question…why do we not trust warnings, that we believe to be completely outrageous? Also, why business continuity professionals need to implement this crucial fact into our plans. I recently watched the Jimmy Saville documentary, ‘Jimmy Saville a British Horror Story’ on Netflix, and was fascinated by the idea of

This week, Charlie needs your help and advice when it comes to RTOs! Read on to learn more about his questions and thoughts regarding the changing world of business continuity. This week, I will be sharing some of my thoughts regarding RTOs as I am slightly struggling, and hope some readers of the bulletin may