One of the essential functions of financial markets is to price risk to support informed, efficient capital-allocation decisions. Accurate and timely disclosure of current and past operating and financial results is fundamental to this function, but it is increasingly important to understand the governance and risk management context in which financial results are achieved.

The financial crisis of 2007-2008 was an important reminder of the repercussions that weak corporate governance and risk management practices can have on asset values. This has resulted in increased demand for transparency from organisations on their governance structures, strategies, and risk management practices. Without the right information, investors and others may incorrectly price or value assets, leading to a misallocation of capital. More

Threats. Disruptions. Trends. There’s a lot to consider when putting together a business continuity plan. But what are the biggest risks facing your organization right now? Are we all worrying about the right things?

The Horizon Scan Report 2017 answers these questions and more. Created in association with BSI, it reflects the views of business continuity professionals in 726 organizations across 79 countries. Now in its sixth year, the report delivers insight that helps organizations plan for any challenging conditions coming their way, and to thrive in the long-term.

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) has developed prioritised mitigation strategies to help technical cyber security professionals in all organisations mitigate cyber security incidents. This guidance addresses targeted cyber intrusions, ransomware and external adversaries with destructive intent, malicious insiders, 'business email compromise' and industrial control systems.

This guidance is informed by ASD's experience responding to cyber security incidents and performing vulnerability assessments and penetration testing Australian government organisations.  Read more

The Global Risks Report 2017 features perspectives from nearly 750 experts on the perceived impact and likelihood of 30 prevalent global risks as well as 13 underlying trends that could amplify them or alter the interconnections between them over a 10-year timeframe.

2016 saw a crystallization of political risks that have led to the election of populist leaders, a loss of faith in institutions and increased strain on international cooperation. We should not be surprised by this: for the past decade, the Global Risks Report has been drawing attention to persistent economic, social and political factors that have been shaping our risks landscape.

This year’s report examines the five greatest priorities facing the world in 2017, their interconnections and the actions necessary to avoid their harshest fall-out.

The benefits of drone deployment during disaster recovery are well-known. They have supported emergency response teams around the world many times - providing critical, real-time insight for faster damage assessments and faster recovery decisions. But drones can also be deployed during business continuity planning and exercising to great effect, says Kate Treen.

For businesses with structural assets, such as buildings, powerlines, turbines and physical infrastructure, an incident is far more likely to impact badly when business continuity planning updates for these assets has not been effective or frequent enough. Collecting accurate data periodically (and aiming to reduce recovery times) can significantly improve the effectiveness of business continuity plans.

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It is easy for organizations to feel overwhelmed by the number and scale of the risks that are faced; but often the perception of the potential harm engendered by various risks is exaggerated. In this article Chris Butler lists the real risks that every organization needs to consider.

Did you know the world’s most dangerous animal is not a shark, or a bear, but is in fact a mosquito? What’s certain is that human perception of risk is notoriously flawed; often, the events that concern and outrage us the most are the least likely to happen. 

From political and economic tremors to cyber threats, 2017 represents another minefield of risks for businesses. For organizations, forging a deepened understanding of both threats and risk factors is crucial for remaining robust, resilient, and most of all, ahead of the competition. Part of this involves separating the myths from reality. So, what then are the real risks to business today?

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Ponemon Institute has just released its 12th annual Cost of Data Breach Study. The report is sponsored by IBM and represents the industry’s gold-standard benchmark research.

Ponemon Institute researchers interviewed IT, compliance and information security practitioners representing 419 organizations across 12 countries: United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, France, Brazil, Japan, Italy, India, the Middle East (including United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia), Canada and the ASEAN region (including Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia).

Continual rapid developments in technology and the subsequent impacts on society bring business continuity challenges and opportunities. In this article, Charlie Boffin, CEO of ClearView, explores the subject.

The 2017 FM Global Resilience Index has been published. The annual index, which is online and interactive, ranks 130 countries and territories by their enterprise resilience to disruptive events. Now in its fourth year, the index provides a unique resource to help business executives site facilities, select suppliers, evaluate established supply chains and identify customers who may be vulnerable.

Users of the index can now investigate 12 quantified resilience drivers related to each country’s economic strength, risk quality and supply chain condition. The index also ranks countries for overall enterprise resilience.

Switzerland occupies the number-one ranking, reflecting high scores for its infrastructure, local supplier quality, political stability, control of corruption and economic productivity. Haiti ranks at the bottom of the index due in part to its high natural hazard exposure and poor economic conditions.

Feel lost and/or confused about your business continuity planning? Want to maximize resilience in your organization, but not sure about what steps to take? The BCI How to Guides are here to help and give you the necessary guidance through the various phases of the Business Continuity Management (BCM) Lifecycle. 

The following How to Guides are available from the BCI website.

• Policy & Programme Management
• Embedding Business Continuity
• Analysis of the BCM Life cycle
• Design of the BCM Life cycle
• Implementation of the BCM Life cycle

On Feb 28th 2017 a four-hour outage impacted one of Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) largest cloud regions, US-EAST-1 in North America. Since many enterprises rely on AWS this outage, many times longer than the expected annual downtime for the S3 cloud storage system where the issue occurred, is highly concerning and requires a rapid review by business continuity managers.

The outage, caused by high error rates affecting the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), commenced at 12:35 pm ET and was fully restored by 4:49 pm ET, according to AWS. Amazon S3 is ‘object storage with a simple web service interface to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the web’ says AWS. It is marketed as being ‘designed to deliver 99.999999999% durability’; a claim which is now clearly questionable!

The lessons from this incident need to be learned; and Continuity Central would like to invite the views of business continuity professionals. To do this they have set up a quick Survey Monkey survey: please take part here, it will only take a few minutes.

SmartData Collective | June 10

Your disaster recovery strategy needs to be pretty comprehensive. It’s not just about making sure that your backup is viable. There’s an entire strategy that needs to be put in place and that means identifying the roles of your employees and establishing an action plan. But how do you know what to do unless you have some idea of how the business will be impacted?