We publish weekly updates from the business continuity world, covering recent news items or reflecting on our travels and experiences with clients.
Charlie addresses topics from a Business Continuity perspective and you might be surprised how much of today’s news relates to BC! Providing valuable insight, Charlie raises critical questions which will surely encourage you to reconsider your Business Continuity plans.
In today’s bulletin, Charlie discusses backups and looks at some reasons why hackers may be able to access your backups. As many of the readers of this bulletin will know, PlanB Consulting, has recently been bought by Databarracks. The company has four main services: business resilience services (the PlanB bit), disaster recovery as a service, public cloud, and
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the recent Gregg Wallace scandal and gives an insight into what we can learn from the accusations. The news over the last few days, especially at the weekend, was full of what Gregg Wallace had done, not done, said, and not said. So, for this week’s bulletin, I thought I would do
In today’s bulletin, Charlie discusses how AI can be used to create a photo and gives an insight into how these photos can be used as part of an exercise. For the last month, I have been in Aruba, followed by a brief visit to Malaysia, so it is good to be back home and have my first
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the use of a traffic light system to show the status of an incident and looks at the positives of implementing this system. For the last two weeks, I have been working in Aruba on a project with a power and water client. Since we have been collaborating with them for several
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses steps to consider when planning on visiting a disaster site and gives an insight into some examples of well-known visitors at recent disasters. Last weekend, the King of Spain, Felipe VI, Queen Letizia, and the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, visited the scene of the flooding in Paiporta, where 219 people died,
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie gives an insight into how the event went and discusses the main business continuity themes throughout the conference. This week, I have been at the BCI World Hybrid Event in London, and I thought I would share what I thought of the event and also what it says about the state of business
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the future of AI within the business continuity industry, with a particular focus on Business Impact Analysis and how it has the potential to revolutionise business continuity processes. Over the last couple of weeks, whenever I’ve been in the car, I’ve been listening to the BBC Sounds podcast The Coming Storm. It
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the impact of the role of nation-states in cyber attacks and looks at some of the attacks we have seen in the UK recently. On the 8th of October 2024, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum gave a speech on the threats to the UK, covering the counter-terrorism threat and state threats from
In today’s bulletin, Charlie looks at the recent collapse of ISG and gives an insight into what we can learn about supply chain management. Nick Sims of Cornwood Consulting inspired this bulletin, by sharing recent insights into supply chain issues at Aston Martin. He mentioned, “In a strategic adjustment, Aston Martin announced it would reduce its 2024 production
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie looks at the pros and cons of SIMEX (Simulation Exercise) and gives an insight into his experience running a live SIMEX. About three weeks ago, I planned, ran, and reported on the biggest SIMEX I have ever conducted in my whole career. It was a ‘no notice’ exercise, meaning the organisation was not
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the BCI’s CBCI Certification course and how it has changed from when it was first developed, and discusses his recent experience teaching a classroom CBCI course in Glasgow. You aren’t meant to forget your first time, but I can’t remember the first time I taught the Business Continuity Institute’s (BCI) CBCI training
In today’s bulletin, Charlie follows up from last week’s bulletin on no-notice exercises and shares some of his experiences of his recent live exercise. On Wednesday, PlanB Consulting conducted the biggest exercise we have ever planned and delivered. It was a no-notice exercise involving five different teams responding to a cyber incident. As per last week’s bulletin, I
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the importance of no-notice exercises and the importance of planning in an exercise. Shortly, I will conduct the largest exercise I have ever carried out. It is a live exercise involving five different teams responding to a cyber incident. The exercise will involve a full role-playing cell, with role players from both
In today’s bulletin, Charlie looks at some factors which are leading to a global increase in incidents and he gives advice on how we can prepare for these incidents. This week I thought I would share some thoughts I have had for a while on why I believe we are going to see an increase in incidents over
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the recent riots that have taken place across the UK and looks at the effects that spreading disinformation can cause. According to the BBC, the police are on standby for possible further unrest over this weekend, so I thought I would discuss what we can learn about the importance of disinformation, as
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the recent CrowdStrike outage and discusses the thoughts that other consultants have had on the incident. When I heard about the CrowdStrike incident, I was in the middle of the kingdom of Fife with my daughter picking up her new puppy. Desperate for the latest, I had her going through BBC Sounds
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie gives an insight into the points that should be addressed within a business continuity plan and the importance of including cyber within the plan. When I am teaching cyber incident management, I always talk about four areas which need to be addressed when responding to a ransomware incident. They are: communications and regulation
In this week’s bulletin Charlie highlights the key learnings from the RUSI Report. As a teacher of cyber incident management, I quite rarely get to hear first-hand about cyber incidents, and case studies are quite rare. The public sector has done a few, including SEPA, the London Library, and Gloucestershire City Council, but overall, information from the private
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the recent NHS cyber attack and what lesssons we can learn from what happened. Last week I was keen to write a bulletin on the above subject, but I ran out of time. This week I was determined to get it written and out to bulletin readers. The incident is one of
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie continues his bulletin from 2022 on whether cyber attacks have killed people, and looks at the impacts of a cyber attack in the healthcare sector. In August 2022, I wrote the following bulletin ‘Have Cyber Attacks Killed People’ which looked at possible incidents which might have caused deaths. It looked at direct attacks such as
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie looks at different news platforms and gives his experience of comments left on LinkedIn for recent D-Day tributes. To date, I have contentiously avoided getting TikTok on my phone. Not for any moral reason, but as my youngest daughter Phoebe said, “Daddy, you will enjoy it too much.”. I can lose the odd
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the role of a leader in a crisis team and looks at some of the key things to consider when choosing a leader. I went to an interesting and informative webinar this week titled ‘How to Lead Effectively in a Crisis‘, with Jonathan Hemus asking the questions and Sean Cunningham, Group Crisis
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie looks at the role of MSPs in a cyber incident and gives an insight into how they can work with organisations to be prepared for a potential incident. In a couple of weeks, I am doing a presentation at a ScotlandIS event in Glasgow which will be attended by MSPs, so I thought
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses what is covered in basic and advanced cyber exercises and looks at why organisations should consider running more sophisticated exercises. As cyber attacks continue apace – and having ran a sophisticated cyber exercise on Tuesday – I thought for this week’s bulletin, I would share some thoughts on ‘exercising beyond the basics’.
This week, Charlie gives advice on how schools and trusts can prepare for cyber incidents and provides a useful checklist of considerations. In last week’s bulletin, I wrote about ‘Business Continuity Planning in Schools’. Once the bulletin had gone out, it occurred to me that I hadn’t mentioned anything about cyber, so I thought this week I would