A3: So, You’re Having a Disaster… Now What?
Tom Serio, MTS
This session will not only take into consideration the countless hours and resources you’ve spent on planning to find out if you’re truly ready when the time has come to put your plan to the test but highlight areas of concern you may have never thought of or put way down on the priority list. The presenter will walk you through a real-life disaster that impacted a large business and forced it to enact ALL of its business continuity plans. He’ll take you on an up-close, inside look at the reality of the situation: What was upper management thinking? How quickly and successfully did employees get back to work? How did the company make the disaster transparent to the customers? This session will address some valuable and real lessons learned as the organization’s corporate campus recovered from a nine-day outage.
B3: Preparing Your Business for Cyberattack Recovery
Steven Ross, Risk Masters International
Success in recovering from cyberattacks – especially destructive ones like ransomware – does not happen when the attack begins. Organizations must lay the groundwork for recovery well in advance. There are business components, especially in reaching contingent agreements with customers and vendors. Management should prepare by determining their loss tolerance and the conditions under which they will pay a ransom. This presentation lays out an action plan for preparedness, including considerations of cost, personnel, procedures, and maintenance.
E5: Resilience and the Changing Role of the Continuity Leader
Ann Pickren, Onsolve
It’s more important than ever for organizations to take a more holistic approach to dynamic and evolving risks. The presenter explains how the role of the business continuity professional is changing as organizations shift to a focus on operational resilience. Attendees will learn what it means to have an operational resilience culture, five ways continuity leaders can drive resilience, and the new skills continuity leaders will need to lead to influence change.
E6: How Professional Associations Create Value During Mandated Shelter-in-Place and Social Distancing
Tonya York, Business Recovery Managers Association
As President of the Business Recovery Managers Association, 2020 required a large pivot in order to be In-Service to its members. This session will explore strategies used to support membership during the pandemic while working at full capacity navigating COVID19. Topics covered will include moving from monthly in-person meetings to weekly/bi-monthly webinars, conducting virtual in-person meetings via Zoom complete with food and entertainment, creating opportunities for “connection” despite the inability to meet in person, leveraging social media, and dealing with the lasting changes post-pandemic.
F5: Operational Resilience – Beyond Planning
Brian Zawada, Riskonnect, Inc., and Mike Keating, Reinsurance Group of America
One of the most common points of feedback on operational resilience is that the outcomes are much clearer for executive management. But why is that? Join us for this session where we discuss how the use of “severe yet plausible scenarios” make preventing and preparing for disruption “real” for different stakeholder groups. We’ll discuss how to identify them, how to use them to improve resilience, and how they related to testing and exercising. We will also discuss how they relate to key risk indicators and measures that illuminate vulnerabilities to disruption and where recovery strategies fail to align to business objectives.