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 this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the stripped titles of Prince Andrew (now Andrew Mountbatten Windsor), and shares some key lessons that we can apply in our own organisations. Andrew as a name doesn’t work as well as the Sound of Music’s “How do you solve a problem like Maria?”, but the sentiment of the song and the many ‘sins’
In today’s bulletin, Charlie discusses Comhairle nan Eilean Siar’s cyber attack back in 2023 and gives an insight into ways organisations can aid recovery after a cyber incident. This week, as some of you may have seen on LinkedIn, I have been in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, speaking to the Council about their cyber attack. They
In today’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the recent findings from Check Point’s State of Cyber Security Report and gives an idea of the takeaways from the report. This week, I have been teaching my two-day cyber course, and I felt inspired to write something on cyber. While browsing the internet, I came across Check Point’s report on ‘The State
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the recent Pandora cyber attack and gives an insight into the lessons we can learn from the incident. A couple of events have inspired the bulletin this week. Firstly, my wife, Kim, received an email from Pandora, the jewellery company, informing her of a data breach. This resonated with me because it
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie gives an insight into Lucy Easthope’s book which provides some useful takeaways for dealing with an incident. I have been off for the last couple of weeks and have been trying to do some reading. I have been working through Lucy Easthope’s book, Come What May: Life-Changing Lessons for Coping with Crisis, and
In today’s bulletin, Charlie discusses Heathrow Airport’s recent power outage and gives advice on how we can learn from the event. I did a load of research for this week’s podcast, so I thought I would use that research to write the bulletin as well. I wrote a bulletin some time ago on the CrowdStrike incident and whether consultants should add their
In the latest bulletin, Charlie discusses the introduction of learning theories in exercising and looks into why these theories are useful when conducting an exercise.
In today’s bulletin, Charlie looks at the cyber attack that has affected Comhairle nan Eilean Siar and discusses the impacts of the attack. This week, I conducted an exercise with a client in the financial sector. At the end of the exercise, we discussed how long it would take the organisation to recover all its systems after the
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the impact of the devastating fires in Los Angeles and gives an important insight into what we can learn from the event. This week, I was interviewed by Alex Fullick for his ‘Preparing for the Unexpected’ podcast. The title of my talk was ‘Future Risks: Why the World is Becoming More Dangerous’,
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 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 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 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 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 today’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the devastating earthquake that has hit Taiwan and highlights the importance of ‘lessons learned’ after a disaster. We are accustomed to witnessing mass casualties from earthquakes. The Turkey earthquake, reported to have killed 56,000 people in February 2023 and the Morocco earthquake in September of the same year, which claimed approximately 3,000 lives,
Charlie looks into the recent incident at Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore and discusses the potential impacts of the accident. Often when I write my bulletin, it is about the latest cyber incident and what we can learn from it. However, last week, the crash of the MV Dali into the Francis Scott Key Bridge and its
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie gives an insight into Gloucester City Council’s cyber attack that took place late last year and discusses what we can learn from the incident. The above report was published in December 2023, and I have just got around to reading it. I thought that, after looking at the British Library’s cyber attack report
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie looks into the cyber attack on the British Library and discusses what organisations can take away from the attack. It’s difficult to extract lessons learned from cyber response when you are not the responder. Most organisations don’t like to share their lessons, or when they do, they mainly do so behind closed doors.
In this week’s bulletin, Charlie explains what MITRE ATT&CK is and the importance of familiarising yourself with its framework. First, this question may not apply to you if you’re a “techie” involved in preparing your organisation for a cyberattack. You should already be familiar with the framework and use it as a part of developing your organisation’s cybersecurity
This week, Charlie discusses the ongoing RAAC (Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete) crisis and advises us on what we can take away from the crisis. Once again, we have a business continuity incident dominating the headlines. When business continuity was first conceived in the 1990s, it focused on what we should do if the buildings our organisation worked in
In this bulletin, Charlie shares his thoughts and opinions on the current controversy revolving around the Scottish Government. He dissects how some actions during the COVID pandemic might have affected the country, comparing it to other recent disasters faced by the UK. This week, we saw a sight that, if you are from Scotland, we haven’t seen for
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 school. As the
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 filled with the
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 ‘Female Journalists Talk
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 issues certifications, standards,
Charlie shares his thoughts on the recent CYBERUK 2022 conference. This week Dawn, the Business Development Manager from PlanB Consulting, and I, attended CYBERUK 2022 at the ICC Conference Centre in Newport Wales. Therefore, for today’s bulletin, I will be sharing some of the highlights and my thoughts on the event. The event is the National Cyber Security Centre’s (NCSC)