Business Preparedness: Best Practices

7 Steps to Protect Your Organization Against 21st Century

Threats

1. Conduct a threat assessment

Threat assessment

• Assess each office location separately:

– Geographical– Internal– External– Historical

2. Create emergency plans

Emergency plans

• Emergency response plan:

– Evacuation– Sheltering-in-place– Designation of roles & responsibilities– Turning off HVAC– Review building management’s plans – gaps?

Emergency plans

• Business continuity plan

– Minimum requirements for continuing operations

– Alternate work location / telework considerations

– Alternate vendors– Contact lists (employees, customers,

vendors)– Recovery strategy and responsibilities

Emergency plans

• Crisis communications plan

– Who is your designated media spokesperson?

– Who will communicate with employees and how?

– How will you update customers?– How will you proactively manage brand and

reputation?

3. Create a trained crisis team

Crisis team

• Define roles and responsibilities

• Choose suitable personnel

• Train:

– Protocols, e.g. Read, React, Recover– How to respond to a range of threats

4. Share access to critical plans

Shared document access

• Floor plans, emergency contact lists, BC plans and emergency response plans

• One central repository “in the cloud”

• Permissions-based access

5. Set up emergency notification system

Emergency notification system

• Incorporate more than one mode of communication

• Enable responses to be collected and sorted – who needs help?

• Ensure system can be deployed simply and quickly

• Keep contact information up to date

6. Practice regularly

Practice

• More than just an annual fire drill!

• Tabletops to assess response to different scenarios

• Office-wide shelter in place and evacuation drills

• Exercises and refreshers for crisis team members

7. Stay up to date

Stay up to date

• Preparedness is an ongoing exercise

• Keep abreast of current trends and threats

• Find expert sources of information you trust

• Review plans regularly

• Review threat assessment annually

Web based plus iPhone & Blackberry Access

iPhone

Emergency Contacts

iPhone

Your Company’s Crisis Plans

iPhone

Threat Response ProtocolsProtocols and information to help take action in a crisis situation.

iPhone

Stay or Go?

iPhone

Stay or Go?

iPhone

Stay or Go?

iPhone

Stay or Go?

Questions?