Whenever I host a tabletop exercise I provide a handy-dandy checklist to all participants. It is a valuable take-away. It helps guide them when reviewing their plan for completeness and finding gaps. It is also a starting point for readiness discussions with their team members. I hope you enjoy the list.Read More
If you have not yet created an invitation, this one may give you some ideas. You can use it as-is or customize it to meet your needs. I vary tabletop invitations to fit the situation. Below is one of the invitations I find useful and well accepted by participants. YouRead More
Hosting tabletop exercises is one of my favorite activities. I suppose that is a good thing, as I have hosted 200+ tabletops during my career. Tabletops have so many valuable aspects. They are a low stress way to test your current plans, identify gaps and improve your ability to respond.Read More
ALL plans must be tested on a regular basis! Tip – Process owners should bring their plans to tabletops and workstation area recovery exercises. They should use them as-is during the exercise. Tip – Plans and strategies must be validated. Our goal is to identify gaps preventing the plan fromRead More
All Plans, Critical Systems, Recovery Strategies, Cyber and Call Trees / Mass Notification Call Lists must be tested and reviewed on a schedule that aligns to your policies and requirements. Testing must validate your plans and systems and improve the resilience of your organization. In sports, smart athletes ‘practice withRead More
I always keep my antennas up for new ways I can improve business resilience / continuity. Sometimes I come up with ideas that utilize manual improvements but more often than not, my ideas involve technological solutions. The idea we will discuss in this post came to me in a really round-about way. HereRead More
I often asked myself, ‘Why do all business process plans have to be 8 1/2″ x 11″‘?’ I could not come up with a good answer so I began experimenting. In this post we look at another approach, ‘How tiny can be beautiful!’ There is definitely a place for large, detailed, wide-scope,Read More
Although I love technology I am going a bit old-school with this one so we leave nothing to chance. Create awareness among process owners that they should always have access to a paper ‘hard’ copy of their plan. Also, tech it out by making plans available to them in a secure locationRead More
Did you remember to build a plan for your Business Continuity/Resilience Department? Did you include the Business Continuity/Resilience Department in your BIA? Did you include the Business Continuity Department in the Executive Report you created? Do you have a documented plan for the Business Continuity/Resilience Department at the enterprise and local levels?Read More