William PollockSnr VP & National ManagerMRC-Risk Services Melbourne
Maintaining Operations in the Face of Unexpected Loss
New Realities in Business Continuity Management
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General Overview - MRC
Management Consulting Division of Marsh
Global Representation
Principal focus - To provide risk solutions to clients
Multiple portfolios / services / operating synergies
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BCM - A Viewpoint
BEING PROPERLY PREPARED IS A COMPLEX SCIENCE
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AN OPINION
MURPHY’S LAW STILL EXISTS - BUT WE DON’T HAVE TO MAKE IT EASY FOR HIM
WE CAN NEVER COVER ALL THE BASES ALL OF THE TIME - BUT GOOD BCM CAN KEEP YOU IN THE GAME
“WINGING IT” IS FOR THE BIRDS - AND SHOULD BE AVOIDED OR
BECOME AN ACTION OF LAST RESORT
IT USUALLY ONLY WORKS WELL:¯ IN THE MOVIES OR
¯ IF YOU ARE ALL GOING IN THE SAME DIRECTION AND READING THE SAME SCRIPT - (ie GOOD BCM)
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BCM - What Does It Mean?
DEFINITION:
The development, maintenance and implementation of strategies; plans and actions to ensure the continued availability of critical business processes and services
It includes:
–pre-empting the impact of an incident / crisis
–responding to the incident / crisis
–implementing contingency / continuity plans
–stabilising / recovering critical functions
–resuming / restoring normal operations
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BCM – What are the Drivers?
Legislation / Regulations / Statutes / Standards / Government Reports
– ASX Corporate Governance guidelines,
– CLERP 9
– APRA - Australia (GPS 222)
– Sarbanes Oxley in the USA,
– Australian Standards Handbook HB 221 - Business Continuity Management
Precedents / Royal Commissions / Senate Inquiries / Parliamentary Inquiries
Increasing Litigation / Speed of Communication / Investigation / Observations
Customer, employee, stakeholder and supplier expectations
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BCM - WHAT IS REALLY DIFFERENT
COMMUNITY IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY MORE AWARE
EXPECTATIONS ARE HIGHER
LEVELS OF TOLERANCE ARE DECREASING
ENVIRONMENT IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY MORE COMPLEX**
PERCEPTIONS CAN “CAUSE DAMAGE”
RULE OF PRECEDENT
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BCM - why do it?
General Findings:
43% of businesses experiencing major disasters never re-open
29% close within three years
< 50% of organisations have business recovery plans and at
least 90% never test the plans
75% of businesses are UNABLE TO FUNCTION without IT
support within 14 days
“recovery time” is invariably underestimated
“costs” of recovery not always recovered by BI
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Why is the Plan itself – so important?
– regulated requirement
– specific response capability vs risk profile vs time
– optimisation of response & recovery strategy
– pre-determined allocation of resources / equipment
– focussed preparation / implementation / training
– enables assessment of specific capabilities and preparedness against known risk / incident type
Business Continuity Plan
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Business Continuity Management
How do we go about it?
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BCM definitions:
Emergency Response
Crisis Management
Crisis Communication Management
Business Continuity Plan
Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)
Business Continuity Management
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What are YOU trying to do?
Prevent the problem
Fix the problem
Manage Issues & Implications
Recover and Continue from the event
Protect the Enterprise
Act diligently
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Business Continuity Management (BCM) Marsh Integrated Approach
Policy
Crisis Management&
Communication
RecoveryStrategies
Training/Awareness
BIA / Risk Assessment
EmergencyResponse
EnterpriseValue
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ALTERNATIVE
OPTIONS(RECOVERY (RECOVERY
RESOURCES)RESOURCES)
BUSINESS
OPERATIONS
Recovery Recovery OptionsOptions
ACTIONS COMMUNICATIONS
Recovery Recovery PrioritiesPriorities
Recovery Procedures
Recovery Time Objectives
Critical Business Processes
Plan development - Step by Step Process
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BCM – A Development Perspective
Some questions:
What is the actual composition of the impacted activities?
What are the critical elements / processes / areas of dependency associated with the impacted activities?
Where are the bottlenecks and / or key points of failure associated with the impacted activities?
Where does your office / function / organisation sit within the “greater” network
Are there any factors or 3rd party disturbances - outside your control - which could directly / indirectly affect the recovery efficiency of the impacted activity?
What are the precedents? How can you minimise impact on recovery? How do you retain control?
What level of pain are you prepared to carry before it detrimentally affects the objectives of the business function and its subsequent recovery?
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What happens when a key process is overloaded / disrupted?
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BCM DevelopmentSome Practical Considerations – Think PROCESS !!!!
Mission critical activity:– Financial and non-financial impacts
– Recovery Time Objective (RTO) & Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
– Critical processes / inter- dependencies identified & prioritised
– Minimum level of resources identified - phased over time
– Key people / teams identified; trained; notified; activated; tasked
– Business recovery – linked to – IT system recovery / Hot Site !!!!!
– Key documents backed up & stored off site
– Expectations of Key stakeholders
– Constraints under which the mission critical activities need to operate
– Recovery priorities & acceptable levels of redundancy identified & confirmed
– Audit; review, train and test
not an exhaustive or prescriptive list
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Coffee Break
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The World Trade Center had two 110-story buildings, known as the "Twin Towers" and five smaller buildings.
• Tower One was 414 meters tall.
•Tower Two was 412 meters.
• Built of aluminum and steel.
• The foundation of each tower extended more than 70 feet below ground, resting on solid bedrock.
• Each tower consisted of 104 passenger elevators and 21,800 windows.
• About 50,000 people worked in the complex, which housed the offices of more than 430 businesses
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Indicative Incident Response
Evacuation
Setting up an information centre, to register employees and make an inventory of missing or wounded people
Care for employees; families and victims; community
Setting up communication and IT networks
Creating alternative office space
Managing / Recovering day to day business
Security
not an exhaustive list
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Merely Identifying Risks is Not Enough
At Corporate level:
many companies completed a risk assessment report to Turnbull or other Corporate Governance requirements - went no further or “believed” controls “in place” were adequate
Insurance was obviously vital for the businesses affected but it was evident that insurance was not enough to ensure continued operation.
Risk Control is only the starting point - a waste of time unless meaningful follow-up action is taken
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Some BCM Findings-General Market
– Processes Inability to locate key personnel - after evacuation
poor security at secondary site
ill-defined secondary / alternate site transition
Inability to move to alternative locations with minimal disruptions to ongoing business
Inability to execute critical business functions in a timely manner
undefined alternatives in “supply chain”
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Some BCM Lessons - General market
Contingency Planning detailed plans - less effective logistical errors - common inadequate data recovery optimistic scenario planning
People
– plans assumed impact on premises / functions
– BUT people skills / intellectual knowledge / resources still available.
People / intellectual property can and were lost Trauma needed to be managed Ability to handle stress and trauma is not always directly
associated with seniority
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Some BCM Lessons-General Market
Logistics inadequate security for affected offices / companies relocation of large numbers of traumatised people and / or
support teams involved in recovery impact of loss of personnel; services and logistics
associated with relocation
Crisis Management Confusion Secondary EOC - “outside” exclusion zone logistics - impaired efficiency / speed of EOC set-up / wide area issues need to be considered
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Some BCM Lessons-General Market
Telecoms
– businesses may not be able to rely on telecom networks in the event of a major emergency
– Examples: need to check for “choke points’
internet reliant firms saw websites down for days
other firms experienced massive surge on internet utilisation causing servers / routers to overload
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Some BCM Lessons-General Market
Reputation Management
– all actions in the gun-sight of the media - during and post incident
stakeholder management issues not always clearly defined; differentiated or managed appropriately
public expectations need to be taken into account corporate reputation; brand management moral issues are paramount eg:
compensation / medical / general insurance benefits / severance
trauma counselling / NOK
– Comparisons are inevitable - No Rules - unless international precedents considered
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Some BCM Lessons-General Market
Risk Identification - outside “Comfort Zone”
if “likely” look for “global precedents & parallels
do not be blinkered by “corporate / personal history”
do not avoid the “apparently insolvable” - there is usually a precedent
always debate the acceptance of risk and the associated recovery strategy - they do change with time
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What Is Different
Strategic Re-Assessment of BCM fundamentals multiple and concurrent points of failure in critical
systems increased awareness of integration of “knowledge” and
systems human element + logistics vs technology geographical impacts (local-regional-global) supply chains / fish-bones redundancies vs interdependencies cross - industry impacts increased regulatory scrutiny
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References – post 9/11
Text sourced from “global continuity.com”
– incorporating findings from McKinsey; Gartner; Dataquest;
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PWC
Financial Review