Mock Sponsors

Breakout Session 3
Monday, March 26 - 4:15 - 5:15 p.m.

Sessions in each breakout track run concurrently.
Choose one session from each track.

Strategic Session 3
Novice/Intermediate/Advanced

IT in a Business Context. Continuity in a Universal Language

Shiraz Alikhan, Forsythe Solutions Group

Increasing regulatory requirements, customer demands, competition and globalization intensify demands for business function availability, in turn increasing expectations for IT to maintain availability. Many times a disconnect exists between IT’s actual continuity capabilities and business unit expectations of these capabilities, also known as the “Business Continuity Gap.” This interactive session will utilize real-life lessons to outline six key steps for building a solid communications foundation, including establishing business units as customers, addressing technology issues in business function terminology and involving business units in critical-application decision making.
As principal consultant of business continuity and disaster recovery solutions for Forsythe Solutions Group, Shiraz Alikhan helps customers plan and implement initiatives for continuity of IT.

Managerial Session 3
Intermediate/Advanced

Anatomy of Successful
Incident Management

Jim Mitchell, eBRP Solutions

The time, effort and expense to create, test and maintain business continuity or disaster recovery plans is ultimately spent to prepare for a real life disruptive incident. When the adrenaline is flowing, and everyone’s out in the rain-soaked parking lot, will your plan be enough to manage the incident? Traditional Incident Management concepts have focused on just two processes – escalation and event logging. Those are holdovers from mainframe recovery days. Escalation and logging are insufficient for today’s global, communication-saturated world. What should an Incident Management process include to be successful – and how can Incident Management requirements be interwoven into BCP and DR Plans?
A founding partner of eBRP Solutions, Jim Mitchell has been active in the business continuity field for 15 years, as both a corporate planner and as a consultant.

Technical Session 3
Novice/Intermediate/Advanced

In-Source, Out-Tasked or Hybrid Model: Understanding your Operational Recovery Options

Joseph Starzyk, IBM BRS

Arguably, the most significant trend in the IT disaster recovery industry is the “in-sourcing” of a company’s IT recovery strategy. Some industry analysts have stated that this approach is cost prohibitive. This session describes three approaches -- in-source, out-tasked and hybrid models. This session will describe specific solutions, key technologies, and critical processes required for success regardless of the option chosen. Lastly, it will describe the advantages and disadvantages of each option.
Joseph Starzyk has provided consulting leadership for the design and implementation of overall business continuity and disaster recovery strategies for numerous clients across multiple industries, with a primary focus in the financial services sector. As a business development executive, Starzyk is accountable for establishing innovative strategies that drive new business development for IBM’s Business Continuity and Recovery Services (BCRS).  Responsibilities include identifying trends and directions for continuity and recovery offerings that yield intellectual capital and best practice methodologies in support of cross industry solutions.

Emergency Response Session 3
Novice/Intermediate

Corporate Command Centers: Policies and Procedures

Jim Cook, CEM, eSI

Emergency operation centers have long served as communications, command and control centers for first responders, hospitals, municipal, county, state and federal law enforcement and public works agencies to collaborate during incident response and recovery. Today, enterprise sectors with critical operations such as utilities, oil and gas, transportation, telecommunications and others are now embracing EOCs as they strive to ensure business continuity in a natural disaster, industrial accident, act of terrorism or other contingency. This session will focus on how to adopt EOC best practices to the enterprise environment.
Jim Cook is director of services for Emergency Services integrators (ESi), developer of WebEOC, the first and most widely used Web-based emergency management communications system, and former director of the Atlanta-Fulton County Emergency Management Agency.

Advanced Session 3
Advanced

Protecting Email: Essential Lessons from the Fortune 500

Paul D'Arcy, MessageOne

Email has become the most important business application and the foundation of corporate communication. In a crisis, email is your most important application for communication, collaboration, and management. Unfortunately, email is also your greatest challenge. This session will reveal real world email downtime statistics that illustrate the frequency of outages and the precise causes. It will show the most common vulnerabilities and lay out precise strategies to eliminate the risk of email downtime. You’ll see the varied approaches that leading Fortune 500 companies have adopted to ensure that Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes remain operable through any crisis or disaster.
Paul D'Arcy is vice president of worldwide marketing for MessageOne and an expert on email and crisis communication infrastructure.

Information Session 3
Novice/Intermediate

Pandemic Communication Plan Testing and Validation

Marc Ladin, 3N

Crisis communication plans often lack one critical element that can ensure your organization’s blinding success or utter failure in the face of a disaster: testing and validation. We will explore best practices for making certain that your best-laid communication plans work as anticipated in the critical periods before, during, and following a pandemic flu outbreak. Specifically, we will examine the inner workings of pandemic communication needs. Attendees will learn about the communication-based science of message mapping, how to test message content for comprehension and persuasiveness to take action, and exercises for testing communication delivery in unusual circumstances that strain typical communication infrastructures.
With more than 12 years of software, hardware, and services marketing experience, Marc Ladin, vice president of marketing for 3n (National Notification Network), drives 3n’s marketing strategy and serves as a key contributor in 3n’s business continuity planning initiatives.

The best value. Years of experience. Set Your Course to the industry’s largest conference dedicated to business continuity.