Today’s guest on the Continuity Forecast podcast is Franco Cordeiro who is the Director of Business and Technological Resiliency at KPMG. KPMG is a large consultancy practice which has thousands of employees with offices in nearly every major country in the world. He has been with the company for fifteen years and started as the Head of Resilience for their Australian branch, before moving to the US and spearheading those efforts. He also adds that there is more of an enterprise view of how...

“Crisis management” “disaster recovery” “organizational resilience.” Are these all just big words? What do they actually mean for organizations? And, how can managers actually use these concepts to protect their businesses? Great questions. Howard Mannella has answers on this episode. Howard is the Managing Principal at  Alternative Resiliency Services, a next-gen business recovery and resiliency consultancy. What we talked about: Business resiliency vs business recovery Clarity &...

You can't protect against every single threat, so you've really got to identify which things could impact your business from a physical standpoint or from a business interruption standpoint. I recently got to interview Dutch Geisinger, Executive Director at Safeguard Iowa Partnership, a private nonprofit that focuses on building disaster resilience in Iowa: What we talked about: Threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences 3 factors in risk assessment 3 steps to conducting a vulnerability...

If BC is all about the "what-if" why should businesses spend time addressing what may never happen? Michele Turner came on a recent episode of The Continuity Forecast to answer this question and share her top tips for creating a strong business continuity plan. A subject matter expert, Michele has worked in the field of business continuity for over 20 years and is currently the head of Global Business Resiliency at Amazon.

Business continuity professionals: We often get left out when it comes to career advice!  So, on this episode, Cheyene Marling delivered several tips to advance your career.  Cheyene Marling is the Managing Director of BC Management — a talent, staffing, and data research provider that works exclusively within the BCM profession. She has an honorary MBCI and is also a lecturer at MIT.  What we talked about: The 2 credentials companies look for in BCM employees: leadership + soft skills...

If your businesses can’t resume operations within 10 days after a disaster, you’re not likely to survive.  That’s according to FEMA. You know you need to develop your BC plan before disaster strikes to be successful in the aftermath. But that’s not all you need to do. On this episode of The Continuity Forecast, Tim Coumbe, VP - National Account Executive at Interstate Restoration, shared the 2 other things you need to do to prepare your company to survive disaster.  What we talked...

Why are we continually losing this battle in the cybersecurity war?  Is there anything we, as businesses, can do about it? On this episode of The Continuity Forecast, our guest, Brian Peters, answers those questions and more. Brian is Chief Information Security Officer at Blue Street Technologies, a cybersecurity firm with the mission of securing corporations of all sizes worldwide, one network at a time. What we talked about: Why it takes companies so long to detect a breach...

Thousands of companies are under siege by cybercriminals. Why are these problems getting worse? Why aren't authorities catching these people? What can you do to protect your business from these attacks? Brian Gill came on this episode of The Continuity Forecast to address these questions and more. He's a computer scientist and entrepreneur that has spent the last 16 years helping dig businesses out of data related disasters...and prevent them in the first place. Brian is the Chairman of...

Electronic sensors that stop floods, fire retardant systems that put out fires before they spread, and haptic belts that teach workers how to do their jobs without getting hurt. This isn’t science fiction. This is the state of the insurance industry in 2019. Ryan Deeds is the VP of Technology and Data at Assurex Global, a company that is the largest privately-held corporate insurance, risk management, and employee benefits brokerage group.  Assurex is a conglomerate of insurance agents...

Can you think of a more stressful job than responding to terrorism or natural disasters at the drop of a hat? Coming up with a plan, leading a team, and serving people who are shaken with fear and grief are just a few of the job descriptions Suzanne Bernier has held. As the President of SB Crisis Consulting and the author of Disaster Heroes: Invisible Champions of Help, Hope and Healing, today she’s training others to do the same.  Suzanne started her company almost eight years ago to...

On this episode of The Continuity Forecast podcast, we hear from disaster preparedness expert Jeff Larson. Jeff is the Partnership Manager for the North Florida PGA, a role that sees him planning dozens of outdoor tournaments every year, in weather that is unpredictable at best. Jeff shared with us how he keeps partners, sponsors, players, and staff safe when disaster strikes.

“I did an analysis of a petrochemical company’s emergency plan and contacts. Several people were no longer employed, and two of them had actually died.” So many companies are grossly under-prepared for a crisis. But the majority of companies will go through crises of some kind or another. It’s not a matter of if, but when. Dr. Steve Goldman the Founder of Steve Goldman Associates, a business dedicated to providing expert consulting in crisis management and business continuity. He is also a...

You can expect a crisis to happen. Because it's not "if" a crisis happens...it's "when". So, you need to be prepared to overcome a crisis. And being prepared is about more than just business continuity — it's about each discipline working together to drive your organization toward resilience On a recent episode of The Continuity Forecast, I talked with Alice Kaltenmark about organization resilience — why it takes more than business continuity to overcome a crisis and how you can build...

Over the last five years, 40% of businesses have experienced some sort of business interruption, costing on average, even for a small company, upward of $8,000 per hour of downtime. You need to have a plan because it's not a question of whether a disaster will happen or not. It's a question of when. The most crucial components to getting back up and running can include: New office space - Where is it, how you set it up and do so cost effectively? Restore lost power - A company like...

On today’s episode of The Continuity Forecast, we’re talking about some of the common disruptions that business face. Our guest on the show is Frank Russo, Founder and Executive Vice President of Procor Solutions and Consulting. Procor is the premier provider of complex property damage and business interruption claims consulting services. They have served clients on 6 different continents and in 49 different states. Frank gave insight into some of disruptions companies can face, the...

Are your teams collaborating with one another? More importantly, are your Business Continuity teams and your ERM teams collaborating? What happens when they don’t? What happens when they do? Bill Hord dropped by the podcast recently and had a ton of great content to share, starting with the challenges that exist when these two crucial teams aren’t in sync.

You know that trying to maintain business continuity can be very stressful. Karina de Allicon, the manager of business continuity and enterprise risk at Edwards Lifesciences, the global leader in patient focused medical innovations, is an expert in bringing mindfulness to the workplace and calming the lizard brain inside all of us. Mindfulness is simply paying attention to the here and now, being aware of whether there are thoughts or emotions or sensations in our bodies and trying to be...

You’ve heard all the promise about cloud computing, but is it right for your company? Are there some business that shouldn’t do it? We answered your cloud computing questions in my conversation with Cary Jasgur, CBCP, MBCI, PMP who is the Consulting Manager for Organizational Resilience at Mazars USA. He helps organizations of all sizes migrate to the cloud.

Mike Tyson said everybody has a plan till they get hit in the face. What’s true in boxing is true in business continuity: You never quite know what it’ll be like. If you have the right people in place, you can get through it effectively. However, strategic planning is very important. Greg Holdburg is the Manager of Disaster Recovery Services at S1 Corporation. His role is to help businesses develop their continuity plans, or help companies create them from scratch. Greg joined me on The...

Think of everything that your company does on any given day. From finance to legal, from sales to HR, everything you do is done on computers. So what happens if there’s an outage of the computers that are used to run your business? Not just in your office, but at your data centers or server farms? Can you get your data back? Find out as we chat with John Jackson Executive Advisor and Co-Founder at Fusion Risk Management.  

Do you know what to do if an earthquake suddenly strikes your city? Do your team members? Those questions ought to make you stop and think because lives are at stake. Michael Harding is the global program lead of the business continuity management team at ARI Fleet, the world’s largest private, family-owned fleet management company. He ensures that there are internal plans in place to manage response and return to operations following an incident. Today we’re going to focus on earthquakes....

Whether it’s a natural disaster like a flood or hurricane, political unrest, or terrorism, the reality is that most every company at some point is going to have to face down some sort of disruption. So why has business continuity failed most companies? And what solutions are out there to help? On a recent episode of The Continuity Forecast, we sat down with Mark Armour, Director of Global Business Continuity at Brink's, for a discussion around where business continuity is falling short, the...

When you meet Vicky McKim you start to second-guess your preparedness. She’s the director of risk management and business resilience at Arion. For many years, she’s seen firsthand the wild, unthinkable happen to companies who’d thought they had their continuity plan under control (even her own). That’s why she’s an advocate for environmental risk assessments. It’s more than just insurance, she says. Having insurance is one small component of it. While most businesses will take care to look...

From natural disasters to cyberattacks, we’re talking risk mitigation and operational optimization with UPS veteran, and current CEO of GlobalMesh, Robert Marsh. Robert brings 20+ years of experience to this week’s episode of The Continuity Forecast as he shares with us how preparing for the worst can not only save your business during a crisis, but can save you in day to day operational costs.