The BCPcast: Recent Episodes
Databarracks
Ever wondered how suet pudding could bring one of the UK’s busiest trading floors to a grinding halt? Or why there used to be a caterpillar in the London Risk Register? The Business Continuity Podcast is a straightforward, jargon-free discussion with people who deal with disasters for a living.
We delve into the exercises and methodologies that keep organisations like The Economist, Fujitsu and the BCI secure and resilient, and explore just how much continuity planning goes into something like the London 2012 Olympics.
Crisis Comms isn’t just for cyber and cyber is much bigger than comms. But in the Venn diagram of Business Continuity topics, there’s a lot of overlap on these two.
Where should we focus our efforts for the best return? We’re looking at the nuts and bolts of Business Continuity: plans, planning, testing and exercising.
How to break into the industry, Business Continuity degrees, the best industries to work in and how to improve welfare for BC professionals.
In the second episode on Managing the crisis we’re talking about Crisis leadership. What makes a good leader, how to run the crisis and how to get better at it.
Over the next two episodes, we’re looking at Managing the crisis. Who is the right person to lead your crisis response? The BC Manager or the CEO?
There’s been a shift in recent years away from “Business Continuity” to the more holistic “Resilience”. Is it just renaming and rebranding the same job or something more significant?
The theme of this season was meant to be “Business Continuity – out of the Shadows and into the Spotlight”. Our thinking was that over the last few years, cyber attacks, extreme weather, increased regulation and political uncertainty have shoved the BC profession to centre-stage.
At the start of 2020, that was a quite novel and we thought we might have to work to sell the idea.
Then COVID-19 happened.Now, we don't need to make the case for Business Continuity anymore.
Instead, we’re making Coronavirus and the greater attention on BC the theme of this first episode.
COVID-19 is the biggest continuity incident of our time.
So we gathered together some of our favourite Business Continuity Podcast guests to review and unpack the business response to Coronavirus.
How do you start? What skills do you need to develop? What can you do to make yourself stand out? And what makes the job worthwhile?
It’s pretty frightening to think a separate business could bring about the end of your own. So does supply chain management get enough attention? If not, why? And how can we get better at it?
It takes years to build a reputation and seconds to ruin it. How can a company keep its reputation intact when things start to unravel, especially when the public is watching?
Without due diligence and testing and iterating, a plan that looks pretty on paper can have ugly consequences in the real world. What are the best examples of plan preparation and execution?
The call for greater diversity in people of different genders, race, sexual orientation and disability is dominating our conversations.
The Business Continuity profession is no different. How do we hire the best people, who may not fit the traditional types usually associated with Business Continuity?
What are the best ways to engage people in Business Continuity? Let’s be honest, it’s not something that fills most people with excitement. But a good or bad BC plan can make or break a company when things go wrong. How do you get people to think outside of their role and care about their employer’s resilience?
Inspired by the stories we heard from Katherine Corbishley earlier in the season, we spoke to hospitality veteran Tuba Gursoy to find out what we can learn from someone working at the coal-face, in an industry where dealing with incidents and difficult situations is an everyday occurrence.
Another returning favourite, John Robinson is a Business Continuity consultant and the Managing Director of Inoni. In this episode we look at the importance of the information flows in a crisis to determine escalation and guide decision making.
Katherine Corbishley is Business Continuity Supervisor at a large, global corporate law firm. We discuss her experience of dealing with power outages around the world and how prior experience in the hospitality industry has helped her as a continuity professional.
Richard Bale has had a storied career working for London Buses and major American banks in the city – as well as working for recovery providers on the supplier side. We talk about generator failures, terrorist incidents, hurricanes and what really constitutes a ‘crisis’.
Mel Gosling of Merrycon was another of our interviewees from season one. We invited him back to share recovery stories from his time as an IT Manager and the lessons he’s learned from running crisis exercises as a consultant.
Fiona Davidge is the Enterprise Risk Manager at the Wellcome Trust and this episode is a little different. We’re examining disruption and crisis management from another angle – the relationship between risk and business continuity functions.
Vicki Gavin is Head of Business Continuity for The Economist and is a returning contributor from season one. In this episode we discuss some of the major incidents she has handled and how to deal with the natural, human fight-or-flight response called ‘panic’.
For the first episode of the second season of The BCPcast our guest is Alastair Lee. Alastair is one of the few people we spoke to who took an academic route to business continuity, and he’s had a varied career as a result, including roles at Essex County Council, The Guardian and Virgin Media.
In the 6th and final episode of series one of the BCPcast, we take a closer look at one of the areas that, to the uninitiated, often represents the more off-putting and complex aspects of continuity: compliance.
We examine how good BC and DR practices are connected to (and represented by) regulatory compliance, and consider the merits of different approaches and attitudes towards certification.
Episode 5 of the BCPcast investigates what happens when carefully laid, and well-rehearsed plans collide with reality. This one is about big disasters, their effects, and the positives, if any, that can come out of them.
We also confront the uncomfortable paradox that many emergency planners grapple with throughout their careers - that disasters are inherently unknowable, and no amount of planning or speculation can truly emulate the chaos of real disruption.
The result is an uncomfortable double bind: you hope the worst never happens, but it's the only time your plans truly get tested.
In the fourth episode of the BCPcast, we’re going to look at the point at which business continuity and disaster recovery stop existing as ideas and start to take shape as actions, as we examine the very practical process of planning for the worst, and the testing that ensures those plans work.
How should you structure planning sessions? Who should you invite? And what obstacles and outcomes can you expect?
In episode 3 of the BCPcast, we take a look at a comparatively new source of risk that has landed in the lap of many already-overworked continuity professionals: cyber.
Cyber-crime is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it’s evolving at a staggering pace. Highly regimented criminal organisations are employing talented technical professionals to access and exploit privileged systems and data, whilst isolated threat actors enjoy easy access to sophisticated malware that’s affordable and easy-to-use.
In this episode we talk to continuity professionals and a cyber intelligence expert to look at some non-traditional planning exercises and education programmes that can help to inform existing cyber security programmes and guide user-behaviours towards a high degree of resilience against the emerging cyber threat landscape.
In the second episode of the BCPcast we turn the tables, and examine why BC and DR have a reputation for being difficult and expensive among so many organisations.
We examine the visceral emotional reaction that disruptive events can ellicit, and consider the etymological implications of dealing in areas like "disaster". We interrogate the disparity between anticipated consequences and eventual reality, why fear-based selling puts people off, and why the London Risk Register provides a baseline of continuity to all organisations, wherever they reside.
In the first episode of the Business Continuity Podcast, we meet the people who keep some of the largest organisations in the UK running throughout disruption, and ask the question: what makes someone good in a disaster? And why are certain people attracted to situations where everything goes wrong?
We also cover the first of our resilience quick fixes: What is one thing you could do tomorrow that would improve your ability to withstand and recover from major disruption?
For more information, get in touch at info@thebcpcast.com, or go to www.thebcpcast.com
Ever wondered how suet pudding could bring one of the UK’s busiest trading floors to a grinding halt? Or why there used to be a caterpillar in the London Risk Register? The business continuity podcast is a straightforward, jargon-free discussion with people who deal with disasters for a living. We delve into the exercises and methodologies that keep organisations like The Economist, Fujitsu and the London Fire Brigade secure and resilient, and explore just how much continuity planning goes into something like the London 2012 Olympics. Listen to the Business Continuity Podcast trailer below, and check back in the coming weeks for new episodes featuring practical advice and fascinating stories about how to plan for the stuff you hope never happens.