Having a business continuity management strategy ensures an organisation retains the trust of its clients.
So said Tracey Linnell, general manager for advisory services at ContinuitySA, speaking at the ITWeb Crisis Management Masterclass hosted by Alan Hilburg, president and CEO of HilburgAssociates, at the Wits Business School yesterday.
According to Linnell, business continuity management is all about minimising disruption in the event of a disaster.
Linnell believes most local organisations suffer from an inability to respond quickly enough to incidents as a result of a lack of planning for and testing their ability to respond to a crisis.
On average, in the event of an incident, an organisation with a business continuity management plan can keep up to 50% of its systems up and running, while operations can grind to a halt for those organisations without such plans, she pointed out.
"For the organisation with business continuity management in place, it is also faster to get all the systems back to being 100% functional in comparison to the one without. Those without can even close doors forever after failing to recover."
Speaking to ITWeb, Linnell said there has been an increase in challenges and crises experienced by South African companies. "These are a result of a number of factors such as higher reliance on outsource providers that experience incidents and whose own business continuity arrangements are not adequate."
She added there is also an increased focus on corporate governance and consequently reputational damage to a company brand as the result of breaches or mismanagement of funds.
Other challenges include dependency on erratic basic municipal services such as water and power supply, as well as power surges and load shedding.
Share