THE MAGAZINE OF THE BCI | Q4 2020
BCI World Virtual Conference 2020 SPECIAL REPORT: Remote working becomes the ‘new norm’ Bringing the Gay Games to Hong Kong in 2022
GLOBAL RISKS Geopolitical risks are causing BC/R professionals to step up their world awareness
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Q4 2020 | ISSUE 12
REGULARS
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04 Welcome 06 News Virtual success for BCI World 2020, Horne is new BCI Chair, BCI Global Award winners
12 Interaction
10 Debate
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F E AT U R E S
How is the second wave of Covid-19 different to manage than the first?
SPECIAL REPORT
Expert View: Deborah FitzPatrick, St John New Zealand Opinion: Des O’Callaghan, BCI Canada Chapter
15 Tech Round-up
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News from: BlackBerry, CCP, Connectus Global, Nokia, Rave, Zerto
16 Global multi-tasking 34 Next Gen
At the BCI World Virtual Conference, Business Continuity professionals are warned not to ignore other risks at the expense of the Covid-19 pandemic
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20 SPECIAL REPORT: Working from home Ensuring the smooth running of a business brings new challenges for BC/R professionals as remote working becomes the ‘new norm’
28 PROFILE: Willem Hoekstra It may be two years away, but the COO still needs to prepare for the unexpected when he brings the Gay Games to Hong Kong in 2022
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Fatimah Abdulkarim Alghamdi, Red Sea Development Company
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32 Operational resilience The CEO of Fusion Risk Management says we haven’t even scratched the surface in the new operational resilience world
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LEADERS’ MESSAGES
WELCOME Continuity & Resilience is the magazine of the BCI and is published four times a year. THE BCI 10-11 Southview Park, Marsack Street, Caversham, Berkshire, RG4 5AF tel: +44 (0) 118 947 8215 bci@thebci.org | www.thebci.org EDITOR DeeDee Doke deedee.doke@redactive.co.uk A S S I STA N T E D I TO R Patrick Appleton patrick.appleton@redactive.co.uk CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Christian Koch, Sue Weekes, Roisin Woolnough SENIOR DESIGNERS Nicholas Daley, Will Williams PRODUCTION EDITOR Vanessa Townsend PICTURE EDITOR Claire Echavarry SENIOR SALES EXECUTIVE Fred Dubery Tel: +44 (0) 20 7880 7661 fred.dubery@redactive.co.uk
C H R I S TO P H E R H O R N E
Sustained response
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s the new Chair of the Board of Directors contributing my first message to the magazine, the world is continuing to respond to Covid-19. Current case numbers are rising in many areas and their associated strain on healthcare systems remain a significant cause for concern. We welcome the optimism that comes with an improving outlook for vaccines, but cautiously understand how their availability, the logistics of their distribution and their immediate and longer-term acceptance by the general public is still unclear. As professionals are still responding to the pandemic, they are also managing the
challenge of executing business as usual programmes to prepare and respond to other concurrent incidents and events. Stress and fatigue through our sustained response mean that now more than ever personal well-being and mental health need to be part of our activities. The end of 2020 approaches, with organizations challenged with the unknown of when business and operations will be able to return to a new normal in a post-pandemic world. As an industry our support to the response to date has demonstrated the benefits that are realised by investing in planning, resilience and preparing for business disruptions.
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Jane Easterman Tel: +44 (0) 20 7880 6248 jane.easterman@redactive.co.uk PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Aaron Nicholls Tel: +44 (0) 20 7880 8547 aaron.nicholls@redactive.co.uk
D AV I D T H O R P
BCIW was virtually a game changer for us
PRINTER The Manson Group, St. Albans PUBLISHED BY Redactive Publishing Ltd Level 5, 78 Chamber Street, London, E1 8BL Tel: +44 (0) 20 7880 6200 www.redactive.co.uk
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n March 2020, we were committed to running our biggest BCI World conference ever at the prestigious International Conference Centre in Birmingham – one of Europe’s leading venues. The ICC was to give us the freedom to expand our offer to our members, sponsors and exhibitors. At that point, we were ahead of target on all our metrics. And then it all changed. Suddenly we faced the greatest uncertainty imaginable. We were left with either taking a decision to hope the pandemic would quickly pass or to act decisively, bring our back-up plan to the table and focus 100% on delivering a new kind of BCI World. There was no precedent for the situation we – and the world– were plunged into.
© BCI 2020 The views expressed in C&R are not necessarily those of the BCI. All efforts have been taken to ensure the accuracy of the information published in C&R. However, the publisher accepts no responsibility for any inaccuracies or errors and omissions in the information produced in this publication. No information contained in this publication may be used or reproduced without the prior permission of the BCI. ISSN 2517-8148
Recycle your magazine’s plastic wrap. Check your local facilities to find out how.
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The BCI has shown its resilience and successfully enacted its plans by adapting and delivering successful online events and offerings such as the BCI World conference, training courses, the global awards programme and AGM. The central office’s efforts have ensured that we are creating value to our membership, the industry, and supporting our vision of a world where all organizations, societies and communities become more resilient. This quarter’s edition provides insight on a variety of topics; the first and second waves, other risks, operational resilience and remote access. These are all important areas as we deal with the current environment and continue to prepare for the next event. DEEDEE DOKE
P H OTO G R AP H Y: A K I N FA LO PE
Christopher Horne FBCI, Chairman, BCI
A major conference takes months to pull together. As each month passes you commit to more cost. A cost that is manageable in April may have risen to unmanageable proportions by August with still no certainty that the event would proceed as planned. We took the decision to stop planning for the physical event, and go virtual. We had to identify a virtual platform, discuss our intentions with our sponsors and exhibitors, and hopefully bring them along on the journey. We also had to refocus our many speakers on a new delivery model. Our marketing was modified, and our communications adapted. Through detailed planning, our transition from the ICC to online was seamless. All signed up for the ride: our sponsors and exhibitors continued to support the event, and all our keynotes agreed to work with us under the new plans.
Editor’s comment And the results far exceeded our initial expectations: the best attended conference we’ve ever run in terms of paying customers, the biggest conference programme we’ve ever put together, the best geographical coverage we’ve enjoyed, the greatest attendance from North America for BCI World ever, multiple time zones brought into play, and 90 hours of premium content across two long days for the conference team. There is still no certainty about what the coming year will bring, but it’s great to have options that we know we can deliver, and deliver well, and which are so well-received by our members. However the world looks next November, you can rely on being able to visit BCI World 2021.
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n our chaotic, pandemic world, success has not come in any area to the extent we would like. However, a round of applause is surely owed to the big, bold success of BCI World Virtual Conference – not only to the determined persistent organizers who whipped BCI’s first major virtual event into shape within months but especially to the delegates, the sponsors and exhibitors who jumped on the moving train. Yes, being in the physical presence of peers, colleagues, business contacts and friends is probably the best possible state. But this virtual affair offered so many benefits and many organizations with tight resources, both people and funds, will likely welcome the travel-free aspects. A disaster in many ways, the Covid-19 pandemic has shown us what we can do in a crisis – that’s Business Continuity and Resilience unleashed.
DeeDee Doke Editor
David Thorp Executive Director, BCI
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G LO BA L N E W S U P D AT E
23%
of Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) professionals report receiving an annual salary of £110k or more
Source: Trident Search
B C I WO R L D V I RT UA L CONFERENCE 2020 REPORT
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Virtual success for BCI conference In a year of ups and downs across the globe, the BCI World Virtual Conference 2020 drew 698 delegates – the largest number ever to attend the annual event! Twenty-six exhibitors supported the two-day conference, which was filled with around 90 hours of presentations, talks and panel discussions timed to reach as many people as possible at every pinpoint on the map. It was “a great success”, said Lee Sadler, BCI’s Head of Channels. “And the largest the BCI has ever run in terms of delegate numbers. We also had a greater geographical spread with it being virtual with the biggest increase from North America, which contributed 20% of total delegates.” In this issue of C&R, we feature a few reports from the conference – with more to come in the Q1 2021 issue of the magazine!
By DeeDee Doke Rumours of bleach or mouthwashing with salt water being cures for Covid-19, and 5G communications networks having caused the virus, have spread widely across social media, fuelling hysteria and dangerous practices. So if you’re not certain that a piece of news or information is true, “it’s probably not safe to rely on it”. That’s the advice given by Kelly Blakeley, Resilience Capability Lead at the Cabinet Office, Emergency Planning College. “ ‘Doubtful’ should be your default position,” Blakeley warned, when questionable information lands in your inbox or manifests its presence in a website post. Speaking at the BCI World Virtual Conference 2020, Blakeley detailed the characteristics of disinformation defined as ‘fake news’ that is circulating the world, often through social media channels and sometimes generated by bots, software applications that run automated tests over the internet. According to a University of Southern California study, Blakeley said, 48m Twitter accounts are bots, with up to 15% of Twitter use bot-linked. The intentions of ‘fake news’ vary from diluting constructive debate to personal gain or vendettas, increasing web traffic, or hate crime.
I N F O R M AT I O N
When in doubt, don’t believe what you read
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37%
of CTI professionals work at analyst level with a median salary of £47.5k Source: Trident Search
To best navigate disinformation campaigns, Blakeley suggested that BC/R practitioners aim to understand the underlying focus which might be spreading misinformation, simple malice, targeted malice that intends to discredit, deliberate deception, presenting ‘sock puppets’ or ‘astroturfing’. The term ‘sock puppets’ refers to online identities created specifically to deceive, and usually involves large numbers by a single controlling person or group to create false majority opinions or to stack votes. ‘Astroturfing’ involves an orchestrated marketing or public relations campaign in the guise of unsolicited comments from members of the public and withholding information about the source’s financial connection. Blakeley added that the ‘sock puppets’ technique allows those behind it to discredit, confuse or undermine a person, organization or cause. ‘Astroturfing’ attributes a message or organization to a grassroots movement so as to create false credibility. Often ‘fake news’ stories will have “an aura of privileged information” about them, Blakeley said, and they may capitalise on “fear and helplessness”. Does the information in the questionable story seem logical? Does it make sense, and is it consistent with other
B C I B OA R D O F D I R E C TO R S
Horne takes over from Janes as BCI Chair Christopher Horne FBCI is the new chair of the BCI Board of Directors, succeeding Tim Janes, Hon FBCI, who has completed his two-year term of office. Elected to fill two vacancies on the board this year for three-year terms each are Susie Ansary-Smith MBCI, BCI Switzerland Chapter, and Pete Frielinghaus FBCI of the Southern Africa Chapter. They join Luke Bird FBCI, Heather Merchan MBCI and Glen Redstall FBCI as directors. Along with Janes, Michael Crooymans has also left the board. Rounding out the board are BCI Executive Director David Thorp and nonexecutive directors Paul Baines (academic) and Nick Whitaker (finance).
If you’re not certain that a piece of news or information is true, it’s probably not safe to rely on it information that is confirmed and known to be true? “It might be impossible to make a judgement so it’s probably not safe to rely on it,” Blakeley recommended. Seemingly alarmist stories may be “often forgotten or downplayed” by BC/R staff who are intent on preventing or responding to specific incidents threatening their
organizations. But BC/R staff should be aware of ‘fake news’ that might involve their business and have “essential plans in place” to meet potential risks. However, she also said that it was not BC/R’s role to “protect profit shares” from ‘fake news’ – instead, their role is “ultimately to keep people alive”.
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NEWS
37%
of Phishing attacks on the UK tax authority HM Revenue & Customs increased by 73% in the six months from March to September 2020 after the UK went into lockdown
RESILIENCE
The importance of building resilient teams
IMAGES: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/SHUTTERSTOCK/GETTY/ALAMY
By Sue Weekes Continuity and Resilience (C/R) leaders need to recognise the importance of building resilience in their teams as well as the business. The pandemic has increased the workload and pressure for many in the sector which, in turn, has brought the subject of personal resilience into the spotlight. Speaking at Virtual BCI World Conference & Exhibition, coach, mentor and consultant Tammie Horton explained that resilience at work is about creating sustainable success rather than coping over the short term. This involves leaders creating a climate of “cohesion” that allows individuals to manage pressures at work while staying physically and mentally healthy. Horton, who left her career as a BC manager in the Australian public sector to pursue her passion of helping individuals overcome distress through motivational and
resilience coaching, said leaders must be aware of the significant influence they have on the resilience of the team. “The power implicitly assigned to your management role provides the opportunity to shape others’ behaviour without even trying,” she said. “It also helps define the unwritten rules around how the team operates and its culture. If you wish to promote resilience within the team, you need to think about how you overtly role model
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In this unique year, the BCI Global Awards were delivered via a virtual ceremony
HONOURS
personal resilience. As with parenting, it’s what you do, not what you say that matters.” This means that if managers encourage staff to go home on time but consistently work late themselves, it puts out a mixed message. “The unsaid communication is more likely to be that you need to routinely work after hours to get ahead in the organization,” she continued. “Or if you’re a team leader who readily offers support but doesn’t seek it, or take it when offered, the unwritten message is you cope on your own and so should others.” In the session, ‘Leading for Resilience: creating resilience in the teams you lead’, Horton also addressed some common myths surrounding personal resilience. Rather than be simply seen as a way to cope or put up with more pressure, it’s also about being able to adapt and best position yourself for the next inevitable challenge or setback. “High resilience helps us grow through adversity so that we constantly become stronger through learning and change.” To find out more about building personal resilience in yourself and your teams, watch Horton’s ‘Leading for Resilience: creating resilience in the teams you lead’ session on-demand at www.bciworld. online-event.co, which will be available to members who purchased a ticket to the event.
Introducing the BCI Global Awards winners The BCI Global Awards recognise the achievements of individuals, teams and organizations working in Business Continuity and Resilience across the world. In this unique year, the BCI Global Awards were delivered via a virtual ceremony, allowing even more of the winners and shortlist could attend and participate. Each of the following has won their regional category, then also selected as the best globally at what they do in 2020. Congratulations to the 2020 winners! Continuity and Resilience Consultant 2020 Tracey Linnell MBCI (Africa) Continuity and Resilience Professional Private Sector 2020 Rob van den Eijnden FBCI (Europe) Continuity and Resilience Professional Public Sector 2020 Yasmine Elhamouly MBCI (Middle East) Most Effective Recovery 2020 South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue (Europe) Continuity and Resilience Newcomer 2020 Patrick Meidenbauer AMBCI (Americas) Continuity and Resilience Team 2020 Cognizant Corporate Business Continuity Management Team (India)
Continuity and Resilience Provider 2020 Enterprise Health Security Centre + Consulting (International SOS) (APAC) Continuity and Resilience Innovation 2020 New Expansion Module for ReadiNow Business Continuity Management Suite (APAC) Continuity and Resilience Contributor 2020 Elaine Tomlin MBCI (Europe) Collaboration in Resilience 2020 King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) (Middle East) We would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate and recognise the achievements of the following individuals who have received Honorary, Merit or Achievement Awards: Gary Dade – Honorary Fellowship Alice Kaltenmark – Honorary Fellowship Michael Davies – Honorary Fellowship Pierre Wettergren – Honorary Fellowship John Frost – Honorary MBCI Steve Daniels – BCI Merit Rachel Micallef – BCI Merit Rhona Moodly – BCI Merit Sam Chari – BCI Merit Lynnda Nelson – BCI Achievement Kate Needham – Bennett AMBCI – BCI Achievement Gianna Detoni FBCI – BCI Achievement
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D E BAT E
THE BIG QUESTION
For you as a BC/R practitioner, how is the second wave of Covid-19 different to manage than the ďŹ rst? 10 C O N TIN UITY & R E S IL IE N C E | Q4 2 0 2 0
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D E B AT E
PA D M A N A I D O O , S O U T H A F R I C A
I VA N A M ATA S H A N S E N , D E N M A R K
“Right now, businesses are more focused on survival”
“Workforce resilience and staff wellbeing are more important than ever”
IMAGE: GETTY
Despite being a country where distancing is impossible in many urban areas, South Africa surprisingly curbed the first Covid-19 wave thanks to a strict lockdown. Yet, as any BCM practitioner will tell you, this is no time to be complacent. The country was downgraded to ‘junk status’ in March; many economists think we won’t survive a second lockdown. As such, business focus is about survival; many organisations are concerned a second wave will push them to extinction. If there is a second wave, it’ll affect public tolerance. Given current economic pressures, the ‘we’re all in this together’ camaraderie that saw higher tolerance towards delays of products/services may decline. As organisations will need to enable a remote workforce for a second wave, issues surrounding connectivity and power/utility disruptions are higher up the business agenda. Another challenge is South Africa’s high crime rate. If employees bring laptops and 3G cards home, there may be an increased risk of theft. Ultimately, navigating the second wave will come down to resilience and a holistic approach. Those businesses that embed resilience into all decisionmaking will find the situation easier than those that view continuity as just a box-ticking exercise. Padma Naidoo BCI General Manager, Advisory Services at Continuity SA, part of the Dimension Data Group
To combat the second wave, it’s vital businesses learn lessons from the first. In Denmark, the biggest lesson learned is workforce resilience: coronavirus has made businesses realise people, not machines, are their biggest resource. During this second wave, supporting the physical and mental wellbeing of staff has become more crucial. Companies recognise there are consequences of employees feeling isolated working from home. There’ll definitely be more focus on this in 2021. A heightened awareness of cybersecurity is another difference. Cybercrime has always been big BCM risk. But as firms undergo digital transformations or test new IT systems as staff shift to remote working, it’s left them more dependent on this tech and
vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Home-workers are now succumbing to ransomware – something they can’t easily check with their CIO. Denmark is a rich country and perennial mainstay of the UN’s World Happiness Report; we have a reputation for being laidback and having an ‘everything will be fine’ mañana attitude. However, Covid-19 has shown businesses the need to be more aware, and that a Plan B is important… In fact, during recent months, I no longer give business continuity sales pitches to clients, because they finally get it. Ivana Matas Hansen BCI Risk Management Engineer, Aon
E L I Z A B E T H S A R TO R E L L I , N E W Z E A L A N D
“Clear communication is the key to quashing Covid apathy” In October, New Zealand’s Covid-19 response was ranked the world’s best by Bloomberg’s market crisis management index. I’d like to think Inland Revenue NZ would have a second wave similarly well-covered. If New Zealand enters another lockdown, the way we communicate is crucial; something shown by both secondwave countries and our PM Jacinda Ardern (“we’re a team of five million people”). Unfortunately, New Zealand has suffered many disasters in recent years: earthquakes, Christchurch mosque shootings, a measles outbreak. We found people were engaged post-disaster, but
within three-six months, a Kiwi “she’ll be right” attitude set in. Because of the earthquakes, in 2016 IR NZ committed to mobilise the organization with our devices, which made home-working during lockdown easier. Luckily, all regional offices are happy to ‘lift’n’shift’. Thanks to our ‘capability matrix’, people don’t just work in one job, but can step into other roles. We conduct lots of crosstraining and upskilling, so if something happens, our people can deal with it… Elizabeth Sartorelli BCI Senior Advisor BC and Emergency Management, Inland Revenue NZ
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INTERACTION
EXPERT VIEW D E B O R A H F I T Z PAT R I C K
Hand in hand – organizational culture and change management
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mphasised through my recent research with middle management and continued Business Continuity Management (BCM) experience, companies need to bring in BC into their organizational culture through engagement, collaboration and staff training to improve the integration of a BCM system (BCMS) into their teams. Primarily my research participants discussed BCM leadership at many levels, which required clarity to enable collaboration and engagement throughout the organization. Top management leadership will direct the importance and direction required to holistically lead and embed BCM into organizational culture. The requirement of BC integration into organizational culture forms a significant part of the holistic operation of a company where culture symbolises the communicative personality of an organization. Therefore, organizational learning is hindered by organizational culture that is constructed into three groups: top management, middle management and operational team level. Accordingly, each of the three groups have their own culture and consequently organizational learning does not occur across the groups. Subsequently, dysfunctional interactions between the three groups occur through speaking different languages or by interpreting the same issue differently. If this rings true, all occupational groups throughout a company need to consider
organizational cultural change. Organizational culture and change management can be improved through eradicating isolation and improving communication between groups of top management and the employee levels, therefore bridging the isolated groups. To assist cultural change, behavioural resilience requires leadership, staff engagement, effective partnerships, situation awareness, and innovation and creativity. Consequently, by developing a BCMS and embedding BCM within an organizational culture, and thus providing staff with the awareness of a BCMS, enables them to continue their role through a business disruption. When an organizational system is not in a healthy state, learning is not enabled for change to occur, there is no organizational mission statement, no system in place to adapt and maintain internal changes, no regular testing within or across teams, and no internal integration or alignment of sub-systems that make up a total system. All of these components can be established through a BCMS, which will put all of the processes in place to increase the healthy state and assist organizational change to occur. Middle management engagement is
crucial for change within an operation. Therefore, a lack of middle management enablement from top management will result in change failure. Hence, there needs to be an alignment across the three organizational cultures (top management, middle management and operational team level) for learning and change to occur. Research participants recommended improving their BCMS experience through clear communication and leadership from top management, therefore embedding BCM and a BCMS into organizational culture. Top management needs to be aware that there is the requirement to work across silos to assist embedding BCM and a BCMS as different organizational levels have differing cultures. The research findings and continued BCM experience suggests organizational culture combined with change management are key requirements to move towards an improved integration of a BCMS within middle management teams and the organization holistically.
Companies need to bring BC into their organizational culture
Deborah FitzPatrick MEmMgt (Hons), CBCI, AMBCI is Business Continuity and Health Emergency Advisor at St John New Zealand and BCI APAC Awards finalist 2020
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INTERACTION
OPINION D E S O ’ C A L L AG H A N
What has Covid taught us about resilience… so far?
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continually reflect on Resilience. In March I wrote: “Due to Covid-19 we will… learn more about the meaning of resilience over the next few weeks and months than we have in the past 10-20 years. When disruptions come in waves, affecting people, facilities and supply chains, our understanding of dependencies will be deepened.” For me, resilience is an outcome, not a practice. The word entered our continuity vocabulary around 2003, not as a new concept, just a new piece of vocabulary. It encompasses elasticity, adaptability and flexibility. If we are resilient, we embrace change, we build back better, we transform, grow and thrive. I use Operational and Organizational Resilience as distinct terms: Operational is a subset of Organizational; Operational deals with business operations and physical infrastructure, and Organizational includes nonoperational aspects, such as financial strength, workforce wellbeing, leadership and so on. I regard resilience a result of BCM practices. In the Covid-19 pandemic, resilience in any way, shape or form is relevant. Personal resilience: In Covid, the top priority is individual health, for self and family. An employee’s ability to concentrate on work is proportional to the level of personal threat posed by the illness. If the threat is low, the challenge is simply the physical availability of premises, technology, information and support.
Personal resilience needs work/life balance and is at a premium when the workplace is the home. In Covid, most people forced to work at home have managed the unplanned adjustment well, showing resilience. However, stress is increasing as sustaining alternative work arrangements indefinitely, perhaps permanently, becomes reality. This will progressively affect mental health, employee morale and productivity. For
“If we are resilient, we embrace change, we build back better, we transform, grow and thrive” all the talk of a ‘new normal’, many employees crave a return to the old normal to stabilise their lives. The balance between old and new normals is precarious. Physical infrastructure resilience: Covid has had significant impact on workplaces and technology. In office buildings, the impact is minimal; many are largely unoccupied. However, other types of businesses, such as retail and restaurants, are heavily affected and have had to make dramatic changes, just to remain open. While this adaptability demonstrates resilience, how sustainable is a business operating at half strength or less? Technology is proving highly
dependable, independent of location (office vs home). In many cases, capacity upgrades have been needed, but these are fairly easy to arrange and quick to implement. The resilience inherent in widely distributed operating locations becomes a strength. Economic: The greatest long-term Covid effects are economic. While we must place health above money, at some point the economic cost will become overwhelming, in turn harming societal health. At the individual level, financial strain is massive, through reduction or loss of employment income. While government subsidies have provided a short-term safety net, the sustainability of these emergency programmes is questionable, and the long-term outlook is bleak. So, while most economies are proving resilient thus far, cracks are appearing. National debts are being elevated to unprecedented levels. Prosperity will be in question for generations. In summary, still early in the Covid saga, we see a fascinating display of resilience at all levels, both personal and collective. Individuals are demonstrating patience, adaptability and survival instincts they did not know they had. However, these are wearing thin as time passes, and mental health issues are far from peaking. Physical infrastructure remains strong and adaptable, but major assets, such as office towers, are losing significant value. Economically, entire countries are living on borrowed time, and successive waves of the pandemic will add exponentially to the damage already done. The new abnormal promises to be quite austere. Des O’Callaghan is currently Group Leader for the BCI Canada Chapter, Chair of the BCI Americas Next Practice Group and Lead Assessor for the BCI.
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Find out more www.thebci.org
BCI courses for experienced professionals A range of 1 and 2 day courses that cover key business continuity & resilience topics
Find out more at thebci.org
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TECHNOLOGY
Preparedness for anything Rave Mobile Safety (Rave) is launching a tactical incident collaboration solution. Rave Collaborate claims to address needs unmet by traditional solutions courtesy of an intuitive tool that coordinates preparedness and response for both planned activities and unplanned emergencies. It is integrated into the Rave Alert mass notification system, as well as other communication and Internet of Things technologies, to provide a central platform to manage an organisation’s preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation needs. The solution was developed with extensive customer input, and Rave explained that it is designed to bring “order and clarity to chaos and confusion” in the critical early minutes and hours of an event. From regulatory compliance and daily Covid-19 protocols to severe weather or server outages, it supports the full spectrum of compliance, business continuity, health, safety and security scenarios. www.ravemobilesafety.com
Contactless analytics solution identifies elevated temperatures Nokia is introducing an automated, contactless elevated temperature detection solution to help spot potential Covid-19 infections in facilities with thousands of people. The Nokia Automated Analytics Solution for Access Control uses a thermal camera to capture video footage and takes individual temperature readings (accurate to +/- 0.3 deg Celsius). The analytics engine processes the video clip to see whether individuals need additional screening or are not complying with mask-wearing rules. If an irregularity is detected, a centralised view is presented and a real-time SMS or email alert is automatically sent to personnel in the field to initiate track-andtrace or post-detection actions. The Nokia Chennai factory is using the solution to reduce resources needed to monitor employee safety during the pandemic and show compliance to local regulations. www.nokia.com
IMAGES: ISTOCK/SHUTTERSTOCKK
Blockchain-powered Covid-19 screening solution Industrial safety and worker management systems specialist Connectus Global and Citizen Care Pod Corp (CCP) have set up a global strategic partnership that claims to create a mass and rapid Covid-19 testing and screening solution to help a range of industries operate in the global pandemic. CCP’s Safe Island Covid Safe Zone uses blockchain technology to connect Covid-19 test results to local healthcare authorities and building/venue operators to facilitate the safe return to work. By integrating Connectus’s safety and digital workforce tools into CCP smart screening pods, both firms hope to return employees to office buildings, manufacturing facilities and other work sites. https://www.connectusglobal.com/ https://www.citizencarepod.com/
TECH ROUND UP Best new tech this quarter
Continuous data protection Cloud data management and protection specialist Zerto has launched a new data protection solution, which claims to displace traditional back-up with ‘continuous data protection’ (CDP) for all applications. Zerto Data Protection (ZDP) claims to deliver 50% total cost of ownership savings by reducing hardware needs, enabling recovery of data without downtime or data loss. Local journalling technology allows users to recover without the data loss, downtime or production impact, ensuring BC and availability. Where data has to be stored for compliance, it is incrementally copied from the journal into cost-effective storage on-site or in the public cloud. www.zerto.com/
Rapid crisis communications across all channels BlackBerry has partnered with ServiceNow to integrate the BlackBerry AtHoc service within the Now platform for rapid crisis communications and IT service management. It enables IT operations teams to maximise the use of multiple communications channels in the case of an incident, allowing for more efficient and secure communication. It provides IT teams with the ability to alert and assemble a best-in-class crisis team to troubleshoot and resolve any issue such as a critical service outage or an interruption to service, directly within the ServiceNow interface on the Now Platform. Teams will also be able to monitor the audit log to conduct a post-mortem review of the incident response. www.blackberry.com
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s all-encompassing and devastating as it has been for the last year, killing hundreds of thousands around the world, pillaging national economies and forcing businesses to shut down, the Coronavirus pandemic is not the only global risk hovering in the atmosphere. Not by a long shot, warned Sorana Parvulescu, Partner, EMEA, Control Risks, in a hard-hitting presentation at the BCI Global Virtual Conference. Parvulescu leads Control Risks’ geopolitical analysis team in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. From space weather incidents potentially triggering significant power outages, political unrest and perhaps another pandemic, events that might be characterised as “low likelihood, high-impact scenarios” should always be “at the back of the mind” as the world encounters a dangerous age, Parvulescu told the 5 November audience.
Speaking at the BCI Global Virtual Conference, Sorana Parvulescu warns Business Continuity professionals not to ignore other risks at the expense of the Covid-19 pandemic
GLOBAL MULTI-TASKING
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TOP 5 DRIVERS OF GEOPOLITICAL RISK Reshaping geopolitical realities: Transitioning from the financial crisis, post-Cold War world order, triggered by global financial crises and potentially sealed by Covid-19 – characterised by a lack of international cooperation and a lack of norms on what is acceptable and what is not in terms of cyberaction, data activity, and more regional actors feeling emboldened without checking or fearing national action. The activist society: Focused on issues like climate change, social justice, human rights. Requires organisations to consider new questions around employees raising expectations about what countries and corporates should be doing, shareholders’ concerns, ‘how do we keep track of activity’, ‘how do we look at what’s coming’ and ‘what if our own employees want to demonstrate, how do we support this’. Cyber security and physical security converge: More governments build their offensive capabilities with cyber being a preferred approach, and the propensity for cybercrime has increased exponentially because of working from home. Disinformation campaigns targeting companies for defamation or for their national identity are increasing. Economic anxiety meets political fragility: Characterised by unemployment inequality, reduced trust in government and pandemic stress, all of which fuel nationalistic and protectionist policies in supply chains. Increased focus on local content and suppliers. Hard to get work permits and visas where local interests dominate. Leaders without long-term strategies.
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Her topic was geopolitical risks as disruptor for business, and the Covid-19 crisis offered a strong opening foundation to build on because of the threat posed by gaps in collaboration between nations. [Editor’s note: Following her talk at the conference, Parvulescu also spoke to C&R about potential risks following controversy over the US presidential election and greater challenges for BC/R professionals in multi-tasking. See box, opposite.] In her hour-long talk, Parvulescu said that what collaboration there has been during the global crisis has been “fragmented and politicised”. “There’s a lot for us to learn from,” she said. “Our assumption was that countries would come together” to fight off a calamity the size of Covid. However, she said, “the corporate response was much quicker” than that of governments, with the corporates “deserving a pat on the back”. Governments and other bodies need to learn to get better at avoiding “blind spots” and checking for internal biases in the current “highly polarised” information environment in which “a lot of disinformation” is circulating, she said. Essential to spotting blind spots is seeking diverse opinion, open discussion and thinking more about possible events – such as “low likelihood, high impact scenarios”, Parvulescu said. “Group think” – when executives find it difficult to challenge top management and their key biases – is dangerous and can leave organisations open to unexpected happenings, she elaborated.
According to Parvulescu, the top five geopolitical drivers of risks to business are: Reshaping geopolitical realities, the ‘activist’ society, convergence of the cyber and physical world, economic anxiety meets political fragility and leaders without long-term strategies (see p17). Of the latter, she said: “There’s a lot of short-term decision-making around the world. We see little vision from governments on how to respond to current challenges facing humanity. It is on us as corporates to figure out how we deal with it (the short-term thinking). It puts the onus more on us to build our own Resilience. We as resilience professionals can have our strategies, and if we have the ear of top management post-Covid, we have a chance to use that capital to drive changes.” Organizations should build their intelligence and information capabilities to support their Business Continuity Management and crisis management planning, she urged. This would involve using the right mix of technology, people and their skills and processes to generate “actionable intelligence” that supports critical business decisions. Applying a combination and balance of all these elements is necessary because, she said, “too often we see clients betting on one horse or another”. “We need to be more deliberate in revisiting assumptions underpinning our crisis management and business continuity plans. Too often, we don’t look at the different elements – checking if any of our assumptions have changed since we last looked at it, using our intelligence in a structured way.”
Managing multiple crises Sorana Parvulescu speaks to C&R Add another layer of challenge to those already facing BC/R professionals in a chaotic world: a more personal one. Managing multiple crises at one time has been a fact of life for many BC/R professionals in 2020 “so it’s also this internal crisis mode headset which is exhausting, frankly, and is putting a lot of strain on relatively limited resources”, said Sorana Parvulescu in a conversation with C&R. Also, the environments in which BC/R professionals have been working will
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likely have changed over the past year, which will in turn have changed “some of the assumptions we will have put in our planning”, some of which may be gone and replaced by new situations or circumstances. For instance, “simply finding out where people of different nationalities can travel or can’t travel, what rules are in place to keep an office open in one place or another has been a humongous information collection effort for teams which may not have been geared to do that in the first place. So that’s a steep learning curve and exhausting as well”, she said. “I’ve also heard people talk about the challenge of keeping the attention of leaders in the sense that because of these multiple crises, it’s hard to keep the pace and the attention on some of these issues. There will be some fatigue with crisis management and Business Continuity,” she said. “So, I think there’s a window of opportunity to suggest some changes,”
There is that element of surprise or concern if Trump throws some spanners in the works to complicate the transition she continued, “while the experience is still fresh – the opportunity is still there.” Asked to discuss potential risks in connection with the US presidential
election controversy for organisations operating in or with the US, Parvulescu indicated that greater stability could be on the horizon. However, in the meantime, she said that her company’s clients are being advised of “the fact that we should expect bouts of unrest because of [President Donald] Trump, and is likely to continue to fuel this societal polarisation. So we’re telling clients to keep an eye on the situation and not assume that the worst has passed yet”. Parvulescu continued: “There are a few other things: Trump has a few months in office still, and there is a question of whether he’ll use those months to make decisions that are going to constrain the actions of Biden’s administration… So there is that element of surprise or concern on the geopolitical side if Trump throws some spanners in the works to complicate the transition.” However, Parvulescu said she anticipated that president-elect Joe Biden would aim to make “swift changes” soon into his presidency such as rejoining the Paris Accord on climate change and the World Health Organization (WHO). “And then we have the general expectation that he [Biden] will do his best to improve relationships across the board, particularly with Canada and the European partners.” “But then,” she added, “you have countries like Brazil, or even the UK, where the relationship might worsen. Saudi Arabia is another one where the crown prince [Mohammed bin Salman] has a good relationship with Trump.” While the current leaders of countries such as Hungary and Poland will share more common ground with Trump than with Biden, Parvulescu said, “that’s probably going to be more difficult, but fundamentally there will be incentives on their part to maintain a good relationship there as well”.
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BY SUE WEEKES
THE NEW NORMAL SPECIAL REPORT As remote working becomes the ‘new norm’, ensuring the smooth running of the organization day-to-day brings new challenges for BC/R professionals
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orking from home is the “strongest” Business Continuity solution available, believes Pete Weaklend, senior vice president and work-from-home expert at US-based customer experience (CX) company, the Sitel Group. “The ongoing spread of Covid-19 has placed a near mandate around recognising the positive role working from home can play in keeping an organisation’s people safe, while at the same time keeping businesses operating,” he says. The rise of home and remote working throughout the noughties and previous decade meant that work had long ceased to be, for many people, a place that you go to. The cloud, high-speed connectivity and digital transformation was always going to radically alter the workplace, and ‘future of work’ articles have been appearing in the human resources and recruitment business press for more than 20 years. Nobody expected this ‘future’ to arrive quite so soon though, with Covid-19 forcing mass exoduses from offices and other bricks-and-mortar workplaces. And with a new round of lockdowns and tightening of restrictions around the globe, there is no doubt that working from home will continue to progress from a growing trend to a necessity. Weaklend stresses that now is the time
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to “seriously examine” the work-at-home model not only as a short-term business recovery mechanism but as a permanent portion of a business and customer care strategy: “These recent events have truly rewritten what is required to ensure effective business continuity.” While many functions only have their own performance and productivity to worry about in this new normal, BC and Resilience (BC/R) professionals shoulder responsibility for ensuring the entire business runs efficiently. This puts even more pressure on ensuring their own effectiveness away from the workplace. Plus, they must be alert to issues that are affecting everyone such as feelings of isolation and other potential mental health problems which can have impact on performance. Paul Kirvan, Independent IT Consultant and Auditor, says the effectiveness of BC initiatives hinges on how well remote communications technology is used by the BC/R professional.
THE SHIFT TO ONLINE LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT Early in 2020, and in collaboration with its global network of licensed training partners, the BCI moved all of its training course provision online using a variety of different webinar platforms, led by a live BCI-approved instructor. Steph Morris, Head of Education and Training, spoke to C&R about the online developments. At first, some delegates were slightly wary of online training platforms and wanted step-by-step instructions on how to access and operate the online systems, and how to engage with their tutors. Both delegates and instructors believed that holding people’s attention for eight hours of online training would be difficult. As a result, our training partners invested heavily in providing support and developing protocols to allow maximum flexibility with delivery schedules including time for breaks, how to ask questions and a series of different styles of ice breaker activities to add to the online experience to name but a few. These were designed to not just put BCI delegates at ease during training but to also encourage confidence with the platform and engage with the delegates to make it a positive experience. This has also been the feedback from our delegates. As confidence in online training
has increased, the delivery models has evolved to include more creativity from both approved instructors and our delegates. This has allowed additional revision time for our delegates after their training allowing them to focus on their examination, another positive development for delegates. The BCI’s online examination delivery also grew as the BCI moved the CBCI examination delivery completely online. This provides additional flexibility for candidates as they can select the day and time of the examination, and once completed a provisional result is provided immediately. This has allowed delegates to take an additional 24-48 hours after training to focus on their examination, which again is a positive development for delegates. In some areas around the world, classroom-based training has returned as local restrictions have allowed. There will always be a requirement for this, as delegates recognise the additional opportunity it provides for meeting and networking with other Business Continuity and Resilience professionals, particularly when discussing specific issues or topics. However, the fundamental shift in individual skills, operational confidence and evolving technology due to necessity will see more of us working and training from home in future.
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“The nature of BC requires a lot of in-person communications with a variety of people and organizations” Paul Kirvan, independent IT Consultant and Auditor
“The nature of business continuity requires a lot of in-person communications with a variety of people and organizations, both within and outside the company,” he said. “It also requires strong support from top management so that people will have the incentive to respond to enquiries from the BC person in a timely manner.” He highlights that this is especially
important when preparing business impact analyses (BIAs), risk analyses (RAs), reviewing plans and conducting plan exercises. “Fortunately, conference technology options are sufficiently robust that traditional face-to-face activities can be performed remotely,” he says, adding: “During an actual event, the challenges become communicating rapidly with employees, top management, first responders and stakeholders as BC plan procedures are executed. In that light, BC plan response procedures may also need to be revised to accommodate the dynamics of remote work.” The working-from-home environment has practically demonstrated how a live response can work well with people working remotely. Businesses and employees are enjoying the flexibility that working from home provides, especially with regards to avoiding busy commuting journeys. BC/R professionals are finding that daily BC tasks are being conducted with at least a partial remote audience. Day-to-day tasks, including training and
learning exercises, are being conducted over the phone or online, making use of BCI’s online resources (see box, p22). With pandemic restrictions likely to last long into next year in some form or other, many organizations have already said no changes to the work from home set will be made until after the new year or Q1 2021. New remote working policies are being developed by organizations who previously never worked from home, and staff are requesting more flexibility in working practices.
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Covid-19 Bogdana Sardak, Advisory Consultant at Fusion Risk Management, says there will inevitably be challenges such as not being in the same room with people in the response teams and business functions to discuss and resolve issues, but stresses that as a resiliency professional for a global company, this is not always an option even in normal circumstances. Ensuring meetings were inclusive and not limited by physical location was a priority for Fusion Risk Management even before Covid-19, she explains: “This way, the BC, disaster recovery, incident response, crisis management, and other teams can meet virtually and work together effectively and efficiently regardless of where they are in the world. “When it comes to having a successful remote workforce, it is important to
ENSURING MEETINGS WERE INCLUSIVE AND NOT LIMITED BY PHYSICAL LOCATION WAS A PRIORITY FOR FUSION RISK MANAGEMENT BEFORE COVID have a strong resiliency framework. This way the appropriate plans and teams can be activated swiftly to resolve issues or escalate items to the relevant teams/ stakeholders.” She urges BC/R professionals to focus on utilising systems and tools that are already in place and are native to the workforce in their daily life, as well as conducting training on new BCM
systems and programmes. “That way, in the event of a crisis and the activation of a continuity plan, the employees are already familiar with the configuration of the system or tool and are clear on what is expected of them, so the organization can respond to the disruption promptly.” The availability of fibre and other high-speed connectivity thankfully
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means at-home systems are far more reliable and robust than they might have been 10 or even five years ago. And while there will still be technical challenges, the cultural and less tangible ones may be bigger to surmount, however. For example, one danger of home working is that it promotes a siloed approach with the different functions out of site so potentially out of mind. To prevent this, Kirvan urges BC/R to “actively engage” all parts of an organization during all phases of the BC programme. Sardak advises them to use it as an opportunity to communicate to the business what they are observing in the organization and how it is functioning and propose solutions on how resilience can be improved. She adds: “Then, they should work with the relevant employees and teams to address these issues and increase the overall preparedness and resilience.” Because a lot of BC is about building and maintaining relationships, there is a danger of some of this being lost in a remote set-up. So BC/R professionals may
CONNECTING WITH KEY FUNCTIONS TO ENSURE RESILIENCE Bogdana Sardak of Fusion Risk Management highlights the importance of regular communication and reaching out to key functions, as well as working closely with the executive leadership. Human resources operations have been key players in core response teams in response to the Covid-19 crisis. HR teams provide a unique access to all employee data and employee surveys, dissemination of information, assistance with writing new policies and more. Resilience professionals must work very closely with the HR team to better support employees working remotely and prevent employee burn-out. The HR team is also key in discussing the best approach to re-opening offices in the short term and the long term. IT and security teams: these are also integral in ensuring the transition to a remote working environment. Resiliency professionals should be in frequent contact with IT and security teams to help the employees and executives coordinate the activation of a continuity plan. As resiliency professionals seek to adjust to a new reality, security and IT teams can help re-imagine the new work environment and create a hybrid approach to working, with the combination of on-site and remote working, enhancing the connection
between onsite and remote employees’ through technology. Not only that, these two teams are also integral in safeguarding the valuable data of the business, securing all business interactions occurring in the online space and making sure that the organization has the necessary tools to support collaboration without slowing down business operations. Finance: resilience professionals should work with the finance team to understand the budget for new expenses. Why? The new normal requires adjustment on how we do business and employees should be supported whilst adjusting to a home working model. Essential employees should also be supported while working from the office to ensure their working experience is as safe as possible – this can mean additional funds. Legal: when shifting to remote working, resilience professionals should also work closely with the legal team, in addition to the HR team, to make sure that any new policies and existing response procedures are in line with relevant laws and regulations.
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“When it comes to having a successful remote workforce, it is important to have a strong resiliency framework” Bogdana Sardak, Advisory Consultant, Fusion Risk Management
have to work harder to ensure meetings are planned with people who may not be on the daily radar. Maybe scheduling a piece of collaborative work with a colleague to create the office environment will help connect with and motivate teams, and ensure everyone is clear on their tasks. As new approaches, thinking and ways of working impact workplaces,
KEEP CONNECTED AND IN TOUCH Online collaborative tools are part of daily life for many people but some remain reticent and uncomfortable about using them. A survey carried out on UK workers by OnePoll for Feel Good Contacts found that one in six UK employees are still uncomfortable being on a video call, seeing and hearing themselves on screen and being in a virtual room full of people staring at their face. Just over a fifth don’t want to talk on the phone; they’d rather send an email. Whatever your viewpoint, though, they are powerful tools to keep in touch and preserve some human contact. GoToMeetings: the online meeting tool boasts high definition (HD) video conferencing but users like the ease of screen-sharing, and the notetaking and drawing features. It also offers personalised meeting rooms.
Teams: two or 10,000 of you can meet in one place, no matter where you are. but the Microsoft tool also lets you express some personality in your communications by enabling you to send gifs, stickers and emojis in a group chat or in one-to-one messages.
Slack: its channels allow you to follow everything related to individual topics, projects or teams in their dedicated channels but via Slack Connect you can also collaborate with those in other organisations and broaden your view.
Zoom: it needs no introduction as a tool for meetings and is also a webinar platform but remember to check out its breakout rooms to help facilitate one-to-ones and smaller group discussions.
BC/R professionals will have a continuing role in reconciling them with the demands of an organization’s daily operations. Covid-19 responsibility may have shifted to facilities management and become more of a health & safety issue but in future, because many organizations weren’t as prepared as they should have been, there will be more BC around. Post-event, Kirvan agrees BC/R professionals may find themselves peripherally involved but emphasises that senior management must ensure that BC/R are actively engaged in post-event activities: “They should be actively involved, especially as they, hopefully, have BIA and RA data that can be useful in how the firm reorganizes itself.” Indeed, in many organisations no one has more insight on how each function and employees have coped during these uncertain times. This, says Sardak, puts the function in a position to suggest the best improvement plan and way forward: “By working with the executive team and understanding the challenges, and by monitoring intelligence feeds and news and developments, and sharing data and risks, resilience professionals have the opportunity to influence and define what the new normal looks like for their organization.”
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PROFILE
GIVING IT A SPORTING CHANCE It may be two years away, but Willem Hoekstra still needs to prepare for the unexpected when he brings the Gay Games to Hong Kong in 2022 BY ROISIN WOOLNOUGH
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or the first time in its 40-year history, the next Gay Games will be held in Asia. Hong Kong will host the international, nine-day sport and cultural event celebrating diversity and the LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer +) community. It beat 17 other cities, including Guadalajara in Mexico and Washington DC in the US in the final stages, to host the 11th version of the games. Willem Hoekstra, Chief Operating Officer of Gay Games 11 Hong Kong (GGHK) taking place in November 2022, says it is brilliant that Hong Kong is bringing the quadrennial event to Asia. “It will be the biggest sports event ever held in Hong Kong in terms of numbers of spectators and duration of the event. And it sends out a positive note about Hong Kong to the rest of the world.” GGHK is also a first for Hoekstra personally in that he has never been involved in organizing a sporting and cultural event before, let alone one of this size, complexity and visibility. However, the BCI Fellow has worked in crisis management and Business Continuity in the banking sector for the past 15 years, and the skills and experiences he gained in that time are proving invaluable in this role: “What I find really interesting is how I can use the BC skills that I have developed in banking and how they are transferable to a completely different environment of managing a massive sports event. The world is bigger than investment banking!” As head of operations, Hoekstra leads the teams for programme management, finance and accounting, procurement, ticketing and accreditation, security and contingency – all as an unpaid volunteer. This is a broad portfolio for a global event that has the capacity for 12,000 participants and 75,000 spectators. However, those numbers may change because of Covid-19. Hoekstra is optimistic that GGHK will still happen despite the pandemic – “They are two years away still, which is a long time” – but he says it may be necessary to implement certain measures to enable
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GAY GAMES The Gay Games started in the US in 1982. They are an international sports and culture event promoting inclusion of sexual diversity. They feature LGBTQ+ athletes and artists, although anyone of any sexual orientation can take part. There are no qualifying standards.
Covid-permitting, the organizers expect there to be 12,000 participants and 75,000 spectators.
Gay Games 11 Hong Kong will take place 11-19 November and will include 36 sports events. New to the games are dragon boat racing, dodgeball, eSports and trail running. There will be more than 11 arts and cultural events, including daily performances, a gala concert and a LGBTQ+ arts exhibition.
the event to go ahead in a Covid-friendly way. For example, social distancing requirements could be in place, which would have a huge impact on how many people can attend and how many tickets are sold. If venue capacity is limited to 50%, which is a possibility, to allow for social distancing, then the main stadium will only be able to accommodate 20,000 people, instead of 40,000. At the moment, participant numbers stand at 12,000. If social distancing is enforced, then the number of saleable tickets falls from 28,000 to just 8,000, because participants would be occupying 24,000 seats instead of 12,000. The financial implications are huge for GGHK and for the Federation of Gay Games, the governing body of the games. But, as Hoekstra says: “We don’t know yet if there will be any Covid restrictions in 2022.” The best Hoekstra and his team can do is what any crisis management or BC professionals would do: plan for all eventualities and have policies and procedures in place to deal with those eventualities. In the meantime, Hoekstra says they are keeping a close eye on international events, especially sporting ones, to see how they are being managed and what restrictions are being implemented. It’s not that long ago that a very different issue was on the table. Around the time that Hoekstra began his tenure at GGHK in October 2018, protests were sweeping across Hong Kong as a result of the impending national security law being introduced by China. There was widespread international coverage of the protests. Hoekstra, however, was less concerned than the rest of his team that the protests would disrupt the games, predicting that something else would have superseded them by the time the games took place. “And right now there are no protests, but we mid-November, so Hoekstra says a typhoon is have Covid. I said to the guys that there will be unlikely, but cannot be ruled out. If a typhoon does issues, but I guarantee it won’t be protests. No one occur, public life will come to a complete standstill can really say what will be concerning us in for a day or half a day. “You need to build some two years’ time. It’s about managing the slack and agility into the programme for unexpected and preparing for it, but you that situation. For example, it’s the can probably be sure that it won’t be opening ceremony and there’s a today’s issues.” typhoon – that’s a disaster. Unless you Hoekstra and his team are have prepared for it. If that happens, it preparing for three potential would be rescheduled. There is one scenarios in particular. The first one is day built in for contingency for all the severe weather. Typically, Hong Kong sports events.” experiences three typhoons a year, with The second scenario is protests and the typhoon season extending from May to potential for social or infrastructure Willem Hoekstra and his team have to prepare for early November, although peak time is interruptions. Hoekstra is keen to stress the unexpected, managing July to September. GGHK is taking place that the Gay Games are a strictly LGBTQ+ events as they arise
“There is total uncertainty about the future. Time will change and issues will change so we have to wait”
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PROFILE
Registration is due to open in the second quarter of 2021. Hoekstra has drawn up a list of 26 ‘go, no-go’ points that have to be met before that happens. One of them is sponsorship, something that is very hard to organize in the midst of a pandemic and when there is a question mark over the viability of the games. Insurance is also tricky, as are participation fees and ticket sales, all because of Covid. Hoekstra hopes things will be more certain in 2021: “There is total uncertainty about the future. Time will change and issues will change so we have to wait.” The logistics of organizing an event like this have been made much more complex by the current situation, but Hoekstra is still enjoying himself. He said ‘yes’ to the role when GGHK asked him to get involved because he thought his skills matched what was required and because he is a big fan of the games. He has taken part as a competitor twice in the past – first time in Amsterdam, in his native country of the Netherlands, when he competed as a ballroom dancer and second time in Australia when he did sailing – but expects to be too busy behind the scenes to compete again this time. Organizing an event like this is a big undertaking. When Hoekstra first joined, he was working full time, but that job ended because of Covid. GGHK has since become his full-time focus, although he describes it being ‘a day job and more’. By 2022, there will be 3,000 volunteers on board, many of whom will be working on the ground. At the moment Hoekstra is enjoying working with a team of roughly 100 people, most of whom are doing it on a voluntary basis, like him. “I was more than thrilled to join this team and it’s really refreshing to work with people who really enjoy what they are doing. They are not just doing it because they get paid for it. They do it because they are driven and have a common goal and that enthusiasm is really good.”
IMAGES: ISTOCK
Hong Kong has a thriving LGBTQ+ scene and is a largely tolerant society
diversity event and as such are completely apolitical. To mitigate the risk of protests or any disputes arising, Hoekstra wants overseas participants and spectators to familiarise themselves with local laws and customs before they attend. Hoekstra doesn’t anticipate much or any local opposition to Hong Kong hosting a LGBTQ+ event in the city. “There’s a thriving LGBTQ+ scene here, with clubs, bars and events such as a gay pride parade. There is a risk of protests against LGBTQ+ events but it’s a tolerant society. During the celebration of bringing the Gay Games to Hong Kong there was a protest, but it was composed of about 12 people.” Effective communication is key to managing any interruptions of infrastructure. As a result, crisis communication is very high on the team’s agenda so that any changes in arrangements are swiftly and clearly communicated to all stakeholders. The third scenario is, of course, Covid. Hong Kong enforced stringent measures when the pandemic erupted, and the situation was pretty much under control at the time of publication. However, some participants and spectators will come from parts of the world that have taken a very different approach to managing Covid, many of which are currently struggling with infection rates. As Hoekstra says: “The two systems are not compatible.”
Organizing the Gay Games is a big – but very welcome – undertaking
“It’s about managing the unexpected and preparing for it, but you can probably be sure that it won’t be today’s issues” 31
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O P E R AT I O N A L R E S I L I E N C E
BY DEEDEE DOKE
O
IMAGE: ISTOCK
‘
perational resilience’ and ‘holistic’ are expressions that BC/R professionals have been hearing for some time now and will unquestionably be hearing frequently in the future as organizations try to regain their footing and look forward after nearly a year of crises. However, operational resilience is not only an aspiration in the wake of the pandemic; it is also a requirement under new regulatory regimes prescribed for financial services firms by UK regulators and elsewhere in the world. But by embracing those concepts in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and that increasing regulation, the world is finally catching on to what Fusion Risk Management has known for at least a decade: “We’ve been preaching this for the last 10 years in terms of holistic risk management, and it finally went from us evangelising into an ‘Oh yeah, that’s really the only way you can do it’ mentality,” says Michael Campbell, the firm’s CEO. “And it really is industry by industry,” Campbell continues, “but financial services, at the very high end, are […] genuinely and rapidly embracing this holistic view of operational resilience.” Fusion Risk Management was headline sponsor for BCI World Virtual Conference 2020, and C&R caught up with Campbell to discuss the latest developments in the BC/R world of recent months. Campbell joined Fusion Risk about a year ago, when the business was experiencing “great growth”, he said, and was looking to better harness and manage both the growth and changes in the business world, especially in the regulatory environment. Outlining the market developments and their impact on Fusion Risk, Campbell said:
“We’re no longer doing BC implementation and then sometime later we’ll do an operational risk implementation. We’ve got people who are coming in as the global head of operational resilience for a major bank, and they’re saying, ‘I need it all, I need it to work together, and I need it as quickly as you can get it’.” Catching up with financial services at the forefront of developing operational resilience is the healthcare sector, Campbell said. “A number of other industries are thinking it’s a good idea but they’ve been hit harder by Covid, and they’re struggling on a more operational front.” Asked his view of the impact of the
newly-embraced operational resilience philosophy on the BC/R profession, Campbell said: “It is really making a number of people step up because it [BC] has almost been like a protected area. “But now with real-time expectation at the senior-most levels of the organization, you need to have the answers immediately, you need to be able to understand definitely what could hit you, what are the ramifications and what are the priorities and the options. And by the way, as you’re going through that, something else is going to hit you.” He continued: “So you can’t go back to an original plan – you have to know
HOLISTIC THINKING TO THE FORE CEO of Fusion Risk Management says we haven’t even scratched the surface in the new operational resilience world 32 C O N TIN UITY & R E S IL IE N C E | Q4 2 0 2 0
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O P E R AT I O N A L R E S I L I E N C E
that your business is already in an altered state, and now another crisis hits you. It’s becoming really apparent to Business Continuity groups that you can’t do discrete plans for hypothetical events. “We’re being hit by crisis after crisis after crisis, and we don’t even have time to recover before the next crisis hits.” Campbell agreed that in the new BC/R landscape, professionals from “different sides of the same shape” need to expand their skill sets, particularly in increasing their communication skills. “People in the operational risk group, for instance, speak about similar things but not quite the same as BC folks. Each one of the silos generally speak differently from each other,” he said. “It’s almost a ‘tower of Babel’ when you get them together.” One of Fusion Risk’s goals is to help people from across the various silos to be able to better communicate as they work together to build operational resilience. “We normalise those communications between the different risk functions,” Campbell said.” The company’s current platform has what Campbell described as “a translation layer” that will ‘speak’ to a senior operating executive and say, “ ‘Here’s what’s about to hit you, here’s what you can do about it, here are the most important things you need to look at. And here’s what you need to get hold of it if you really want to talk it through more’.” He added: “A lot of senior executives don’t ‘speak’ risk. So, with the translation layer, the person in the C-suite will understand what’s about to hit.” While financial services is at the head of the class currently in establishing operational resilience, Campbell said that geographically speaking, EMEA is in the lead. This possibly may be because UK regulators, supported by the Basel III reforms by the Bank for International Settlements and the US’s Federal Reserve
System, are about to release regulations on operational resilience (see right). “They (the UK, BIS and the Fed) understand it’s not enough to survive; you have to be able to upgrade.” And does Campbell believe there is room for scenario-type exercises and planning in this evolved operational resilience environment? “If I were running any large business [now], I would want to test my business. And the way I do this is to find out where my points of failure are, where is my risk? If I run more scenarios, I find more weaknesses. I can prioritise weaknesses, because suppose I have what I don’t think is a single point of failure, but I hit it through 30 different scenarios – that’s something I’m going to prioritise fixing.” “So, I think, planning and testing and simulation are going to be huge.”
OPERATIONAL RESILIENCE DEFINED “The ability of firms and FMIs [financial market infrastructure] and the financial sector as a whole to prevent, adapt, respond and recover and learn from operational disruptions” From the Financial Conduct Authority, Prudential Regulatory Authority and the Bank of England
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Q&A
NEXT GENERATION Q
Q
Q
Q
What attracted you to the industry/ profession, and how did you get into it? Having studied accounting, I was asked to support in identifying financial risks for one of the companies we were consulting for. I found the idea of ‘what could be’ – identifying significant risks the client didn’t have on their radar – really interesting. What is your biggest learning to date? As any seasoned risk manager will tell you (having learnt the hard way) it’s all about priority and objectives. The key takeaway I have adopted is the idea of identifying what really matters to a company’s mission and objectives, and those things that can truly threaten what we are trying to achieve.
N E X T G E N E R AT I O N
Fatimah Abdulkarim Alghamdi
Q
What is your career ambition? Growth and innovation. The deeper I seem to dive into the rabbit hole that is risk management, the more my knowledge expands, which in turn solidifies my desire to innovate how the profession will be done in the future.
NATIONALITY: Saudi Arabian TIME IN THE PROFESSION: Three years WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST JOB IN BC/R? My first job in resilience was to set up and build an Enterprise Risk Management Department for a company in the F&B industry
Q
CURRENT EMPLOYER? The Red Sea Development Company
What is the best career advice you have received? “Fatimah, focus on what matters.” You really need to understand what’s important at any level you’re analysing. Focus is key in risk management; without it you will never be able to effectively manage anything.
CURRENT ROLE: Corporate Risk Manager FAVOURITE ASPECT OF THE WORK: To truly support any company in managing its risks, you really need to identify its full risk landscape. What I most enjoy about the job, is the process of decoding these to gain the right in-depth knowledge and insight.
What is your preferred mode of learning? Practice. Practice. Practice. You can read countless pages on industry standards and trends, but if you don’t know what people are saying or what is on the mind of your executive management, I doubt that you’ll be able to really know what matters. What changes would you like to see in the profession? Going digital. Risk management can be tedious, and this may cause you to lose focus. If we can digitise the tedious work and make it
“ ‘Focus on what matters.’ You really need to understand what’s important at any level you’re analysing“ easy to do, not only does this free up time to focus on the critical matters, it allows you to really support your stakeholders which in return will allow them to be more interested in working on risk.
Q
Who would be your ideal mentor? I’m lucky to work at The Red Sea Development Company; the things we are building have never been seen before. Therefore, the people we hired to do the job are seasoned experts within their respective fields. I am learning from one of the best Enterprise Risk Management experts in the Middle East.
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