by Jay Bender, CBCP

he interest in professional certification for business continuity planners continues to expand rapidly during the last year. This interest has been broad based and involves increased numbers of business continuity professionals, a greater awareness by senior management and human resources departments, a significant involvement by several major consulting firms in the certification process, and the expansion of the DRI International program to a number of other countries throughout the world.

Among the major accomplishments recognized by DRI International during the past year are:
1) DRI Canada, the Institute’s first international affiliate, has achieved outstanding success during its first full calendar year of operation. With an elected Certification Committee, a trained and certified staff of Instructors for its education program, and a dedicated and knowledgeable staff, DRI Canada has assumed full responsibility for the operation of the Institute’s programs in Canada.

2) The interest in business continuity/disaster recovery planning has increased greatly in a number of regions around the world during the past year. The Institute is currently working with organizations in the following countries: An International Representative agreement has been developed with the Business Continuity Group (BCG) in Singapore to conduct future education courses and the certification examination. DRI participated in BCG’s conference in October, conducted a review class and CBCP Examination for forty-two attendees, and presented the Training for Trainers class to a group of prospective instructors from Singapore who will be conducting the future classes.

• We have worked with an organization in Japan called Quake Japan, to cooperate on trade shows presented in Tokyo during February and December 1998, and to present a one-day seminar on business continuity planning.
• We have participated as one of the co-sponsors of a Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery Forum held in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia in early December. Plans are now being finalized for the presentation of education classes and the CBCP Examination in Sydney and Melbourne in March 1998.
• Discussions are continuing with an organization in Malaysia to establish a series of classes along with the CBCP Examination in their country.
4) Formal agreement was achieved between the DRI International and the Business Continuity Institute on the Professional Practices for Business Continuity Planners. This document merged two proprietary documents — the DRI International’s “Common Body of Knowledge” published in September of 1993, and the Business Continuity Institute’s “Certification Standards for Business Continuity Practitioners” published in December of 1994. Work is now proceeding to develop the Professional Practices as an internationally recognized standard in the industry.
5) The number of applications who are professional consultants or members of disaster recovery support staffs, increased tremendously during the past year. Among the organizations emphasizing certification for their professional staff members are (in alphabetical order) Comdisco Professional Services, Corporate Response Group, Ernst & Young LLP, McGladrey & Pullen, and SunGard Recovery Services.
6) The number of candidates sitting for the CBCP Examination increased from 528 on 1996 to 725 in 1997— a 37.3% increase.
7) The education program added two new courses in late 1996 and 1997. The Incident Command System for Corporations is designed to assist business continuity planners who are interested in developing corporate emergency response procedures— it defines the missing link between continuity planners and first responders. The Training for Trainers class is currently designed as an orientation and evaluation for certified professionals who are interested in becoming instructors for the DRI International and DRI Affiliate’s classes.

DRI International anticipates 1998 will be even better year than 1997 and the interest and involvement in business continuity continues to grow.

For more information on the Institute, check the website at www.dr.org or call the Institute at (314) 434-2272.

by Benny Taylor, CBCP

ecision makers, management committees and senior leadership of organizations, both public and private, are becoming increasingly aware of their ever growing dependence upon information processing to the point that many business units can not continue normal operations if their computers were rendered inoperative. As interactive systems have become embedded in the fabric of the business, the duration for which an outage can be tolerated has been shrinking. While improvements to physical and data security can be very productive, these measures can only reduce, but can not eliminate the possibility of losing critical business systems as a result of a disaster.

The potential consequences of an extended systems outage include:
• business interruption resulting in the inability to serve customers, lost opportunities, loss of customer goodwill, and inability to compete;
• direct financial loss due to inability to invoice customers, process receivables, collect late payments penalties and missed discounts. Also, the inability to update account balances, lost or unrecorded sales, and the inability to deliver products and services; and
• legal liabilities resulting from failure to satisfy contractual obligations, or regulatory agency’s requirements.

Because the stakes are higher in terms of potential losses, increasingly corporations and public/private organizations are seeking a comprehensive understanding of the risk they have, and the costs associated for appropriate risk reduction/mitigation actions. This overall increase in general awareness is forcing the disaster recovery and business continuity industry as a whole to focus on recovery solutions that reduce the anticipated outage window to only subseconds and virtually no data transaction losses.

As we approach the 21st century, the highly automated business processes must be capable of continuous operation; anything less is unacceptable.