ComGuard Uses Recent Research As Basis for Strategies to Ensure "Middle East Business As Usual"
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
The discipline of business continuity planning (BCP) ensuring that your organization can continue in extreme or unexpected circumstances has emerged as an urgent requirement for companies in the region in recent months, with new studies highlighting that only 35% of small and midsize businesses have a comprehensive plan in place.
Building on a series of recent global research projects, Middle East security specialists, ComGuard, have developed a full methodology for limiting the impact of unexpected interruptions to business, which are now being made available to companies in the region.
“We looked at a variety of sources, including research work by the internationally-respected Disaster Recovery Journal and breakthrough studies conducted by the Gartner Group,” said Daniel Nufer, managing director, ComGuard. “The global picture is enormously useful for companies in the Middle East, because it identifies where companies aren’t protecting themselves sufficiently and provides useful examples of global best practice to institute.”
The collected research emphasizes the need for companies to consider the wide number of situations that could interrupt a business and damage its operations. The Disaster Recovery Journal noted that the largest single reason given by participants in its study in why businesses break-down was human error (43 percent), followed by power outages (39 percent). ComGuard’s advice to companies in the region is to consider as many eventualities as possible as part of their planning process.
“As one example, power outages can close down systems and disrupt operations, resulting in a huge loss of productivity and delivery for companies. While the infrastructure in the Middle East is extremely robust, there are significant problems caused by power outages on companies’ communication highways. There’s an ever-present risk of cables being cut or other surprises like problems with your Domain Name System (DNS), which can stall e-mail or cut access to Web sites. Businesses need to have processes in place for recovery and systems to support continuous business availability,” said Nufer.
To demonstrate the need for such developed planning processes, the Disaster Recovery Journal study used by ComGuard suggests that 74 percent of companies do not feel fully protected against power outages.
Developing processes to ensure business continuity
ComGuard’s new BCP framework covers a range of key issues – starting with the most important part - the business impact analysis – and moving on to recovery planning processes for business functions and technological infrastructures. It also lays out a process improvement model to help companies manage the introduction of new BCP processes.
In addition, the framework provides a number of essential tools for identifying, assessing and monitoring business risks, including a review and test process and a number of design models.
“We’ve developed our BCP framework as a tool to help those technical professionals charged with ensuring business continuity.
However, it also offers a valuable educational resource for senior managers wanting to understand the kind of unknown risks they’re facing and justify their investment in BCP,” commented Chris Bester, ComGuard’s lead auditor for BS7799, the most widely recognised security standard in the world.
“Senior managers and technologists need to be aware of the challenges of running ‘Middle East business as usual’ in the face of unexpected pressures,” he concluded.
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About COMGUARD
ComGuard FZ – LLC is a professional IT security solutions provider offering technology-driven security solution to the Middle East businesses and government organizations with cost-effective, cutting-edge solutions for securing the customers business. ComGuard security services and solutions are independent of any and all ties to industry products, which allow us to use the very best combination of tools and techniques to design and deliver our solutions to the customers.
For further information, please contact:
ComGuard FZ - LLC
IT security solutions
T: (971-4) 391 64 00
F: (971-4) 391 68 67
E-mail: marketing@comguard.net
© Press Release 2003
