If The Tech Fails, You Fail

If The Tech Fails, You Fail

Over the past 25 years the management of resilience and recovery has gone down two paths: IT disaster recovery and business continuity management. This was always going to be less than ideal, but with the rise of operational resilience is now a serious liability. Our eleventh thought leadership event will explore why this separation needs to end.

We all know that Information Technology is a cornerstone of resilience. Indeed, go back 25 years and for most organisations it was resilience. And as the broader discipline of business continuity management has grown over that same period it has always been understood that the two are linked. But in most cases that link is tenuous, and in others offers no value at all. To put it bluntly, IT DR and BCM might nod if they pass in the corridor but aren’t having lunch together any time soon (my apologies to those who work brilliantly together — but I’m sure you understand the point).

This needs to change. The increasing digitisation of business processes, the delivery of ever more services online, and the rise of operational resilience across the globe (championed in the UK by the Bank of England and its regulatory partners) mean that the resilience and recovery of the business is entirely bound with the resilience and recovery of the tech. They are one and the same.

To help us understand the nature and urgency of the challenge we have assembled three presenters, all deeply experienced subject matter experts, each with their own slightly different but complementary perspective on the topic.

Gordon Millar, Global Leader, IBM Resiliency Services Consulting will set the scene by looking at the root causes behind, and consequences of, 232 major IT outages over the past ten years. And in presenting the key elements of this major piece of IBM research he will demonstrate the interconnectedness of IT risk and operational resilience. In particular, Gordon will present a case study of how a single unexpected event produced a domino effect with catastrophic consequences.

Ali Kazmi, Partner, UK Financial Services Technology Risk, EY will then move from the unexpected to the expected — IT change management — and what can happen when it goes wrong. In reality, these entirely avoidable failures are just as serious as those caused by headline grabbing ‘black swan’ events, but present far fewer excuses for those organisations affected. Ali will present the lessons from a well-publicised change management failure of the recent past.

To conclude, Dr Gianluca Pescaroli, Lecturer in Business Continuity and Organisational Resilience, University College London will explore how resilience and IT risk are inextricably bound through a complex web of cascading risks and cross-sectoral interdependencies. Drawing on extensive research he will condense the key lessons from this, and present what this means for you and your organisation.

When & Where

The event will run from 10:30am to 12:00 noon (UK time) on Wednesday, October 20th, 2021, followed by a 30 minute question-the-panel for those able to stay on. It will be conducted at our offices on the 24th floor of The Shard, with the speakers present in person.

For those viewing by Zoom Webinar there are two options:

• a live broadcast as the event is taking place (ie. starting at 10:30am UK time)
• an encore broadcast at 12 noon US Eastern Time (5:00pm UK time), where the speakers will join us once again for a live Q&A

Please select your preference when registering.

For those wishing to attend at The Shard in person, the full address is shown above. For those attending remotely the Webinar details will be sent out on registration.

NB. Please note that seats in the room will be strictly limited and allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. If we are unable to offer you a seat in the room you will automatically be registered for the simultaneous Webinar.