| | JULY 20238CIOReviewIN MY OPINIONBy Lynne Davis, Managing Director - Global Head of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery, JefferiesPLANNING AND STRATEGIZING DISASTER MANAGEMENTToday's business continuity (BC) practitioners are dealing with exponentially more risk. There are more crises, more vulnerabilities, and more third and fourth-party disruptions due to globalization and outsourced service providers. Navigating this environment demands both business and personal resilience across multiple dimensions.Sometimes we have a good sense of where threats may come from cyberattacks, technology application failures, weather incidents, or denial of access to a physical office. Other times, like the onset of the COVID pandemic, we don't. That is why we must always prepare for the unexpected and remain focused on the life, care, and safety of our staff and firm. At Jefferies, we often challenge ourselves and our business groups to see how we would respond to various adverse scenarios. Sometimes we will draw from examples of disruptive events that impacted other firms, while in other cases we will learn lessons from our near misses. These provide real-world scenarios to help us promote, train, and support the firm's critical functions in a stressed environment and ensure we can meet the needs of our personnel and the overall business.Here are a few business continuity lessons we've learned along the way on our continuously evolving resiliency journey: Identifying Critical Resources and Business Processes. What are the key activities that your business needs to continue to survive, not thrive? What are the key materials, equipment, and personnel that your business needs to continue operating? You must discriminate and prioritize because your life raft will not float if you bring everything including the kitchen sink with you over turbulent waters.Creating a Backup PlanHow will you continue operating if your primary location is damaged or destroyed? Answering this question will likely take some combination of work-from-home strategies, redundancy of equipment in multiple locations, cloud-based access to critical applications and data, as well as globally cross-trained teams.Lynne Davis
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