Are you prepared to weather the storm when disaster strikes? Don’t wait until it’s too late. Invest in your business’s resilience with a comprehensive Business Continuity Planning (BCP) Test and Exercise. At SRM, we understand the importance of being prepared for the unexpected. Our BCP Test and Exercise services are designed to help you identify vulnerabilities, assess your readiness, and enhance your ability to respond effectively to disruptions. Whether it’s a natural disaster, cyberattack, or supply chain disruption, we’ve got you covered. Our BCP Test and Exercise process is tailored to y ..read more

Planning for the unexpected is critical when it comes to ensuring your organisation has what it takes to survive over the long-term. No road to success is entirely smooth, and with cybersecurity concerns at an all time high across a range of sectors and industries, knowing how to react in the face of an incident is paramount to your organisation’s resilience. That’s where business continuity planning comes in. Working to a robust framework and strategising for turbulent times or unplanned disruption can ensure that you respond effectively to situations that might catch others off-guard. Tablet ..read more

Recent events have caused a seismic shift to the way businesses work. Those that have been able to transition to remote working have, in the most part, done so smoothly. But now’s the time to put the “new normal” under the microscope and ensure that remote working is secure and safe. In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, many businesses have made the decision to switch to permanent remote working, having adapted successfully to it over the last few months. This can save organisations significant overheads, in terms of office costs, and provide a more satisfying work–life balance for employees wh ..read more

A few months ago, a global pandemic with the capacity to bring the world to a standstill was almost unthinkable. Yet, here we are. Those with high-level business continuity plans in place will be putting elements of these into action. For many, however, it is time to dust off what plans they have and update them to take account of the current threats. The emergency response element of a business continuity plan will include continuity of supply issues and the reduction in workplace attendance, but it is also important to consider other elements, including the business’s critical functions, net ..read more

Complacency is one of the biggest threats to a business. Whether it’s being happy to coast along and do the bare minimum to turn a profit, neglecting to provide genuine customer service or failing to take steps to mitigate the effects of an unforeseen threat, apathy is an organisation’s worst enemy. To have a realistic chance of withstanding any business threat, business leaders need to build a challenge-based culture into their business continuity planning (BCP). What do we mean by this? All too often employees – even senior managers – can find themselves bogged down in the day-to-day running ..read more

When it comes to Business Continuity Plan testing, we should all consider Finagle’s Law. Similar to Murphy’s Law, Finagle’s agrees that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. But it adds a twist: that it will happen at the worst possible time. In the world of information security, it’s an axiom for us to live by. Because, although it may sound homespun and out of kilter with today’s techno jargon, it reminds us of what is important (and often overlooked) when it comes to Business Continuity planning: that your BCP will invariably be called upon at a truly inconvenient time. That’s because t ..read more

Ever since Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution in 1859 we have been aware of the continual process of change in the natural world. Things are no different in the world of crime. When money was held in bank vaults, criminals used ingenuity and cunning to steal cash and valuables. These were the days of safe crackers and criminal masterminds, of explosives and getaway cars, of cops and robbers. But change, as we know, is inevitable. As our business practices moved online, thieves developed a new modus operandi, developing their skills as cyber criminals. During this evolution, data ..read more

We have all seen the headlines about data breaches. They make for uncomfortable reading. Even more uncomfortable, however, is the fact that it’s often through these sensational headlines that most customers learn that their data is no longer secure. We can have meticulous Incident Response plans in place but if we can’t communicate effectively with the press we leave the interpretation of facts in the hands of journalists and editors whose motivation is not to reassure but to create attention-grabbing headlines. That’s because journalists and editors have a different agenda: they are in th ..read more

What constitutes a cyber-mature organisation? Here’s a clue: it has nothing to do with size or age, sector or niche specialism, whether it is online or has a physical shop presence. It has everything to do with the corporate mindset. The cyber mature organisation is one with full board-level buy in. But, above all, its approach to data security is proactive rather than reactive. Consider the alternative: the reactive mentality. If an organisation delegates all data security responsibility to the IT department, providing only sufficient resource to pursue regulatory and legal compliance stan ..read more

If history teaches us one thing it is that there is no going back. It started with the First Industrial Revolution which used water and steam power to mechanise production. This was followed by the Second which used electricity and the Third which used electronics and information technology. With the Fourth Industrial Revolution we have seen a fusion of digital technologies, the use of the Cloud and extensive data management. But arguably we are now entering an additional phase which includes the integration of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances embedded with electronics, software, se ..read more