Is your BCM Program one of the those that have senior manager and key customers asking about the Crowdstrike Outage and why your Business Continuity Plan didn’t work?
The recent Crowdstrike outage serves as a stark reminder of the critical importance of effective business continuity planning. Dubbed the largest IT outage ever, its true impacts are still unfolding, but one thing is clear: many organizations were caught off guard, and their business continuity plans fell short.
The Industry’s Dirty Secret
In the business continuity (BC) industry, there’s a persistent issue that has plagued professionals for years. Many BC programs rely heavily on annual tabletop exercises that fail to address current threats and, at worst, become mere compliance exercises.
The Tabletop Trap
The shift to tabletop simulation exercises can be traced back to the demands of 24/7/365 business operations. With minimal appetite for disrupting production systems for contingency planning, businesses often limit downtime to system maintenance only.
Testing for Success: A Flawed Approach
Unfortunately, some BC leaders adopt a flawed approach I call “testing for success.” This involves designing exercises to be short and non-disruptive, often employing the following tactics:
- Selecting Non-Critical Participants: Choosing participants who are not critical to the operation ensures a smooth exercise but doesn’t test the real pressure points.
- Simplifying Scenarios: Opting for scenarios that are easily manageable with existing controls fails to test the organization’s true resilience.
- Ignoring Known Vulnerabilities: Avoiding critical weaknesses means they remain unaddressed and pose a risk during actual critical disruptions.
- Over-Preparing Participants: Providing detailed exercise scenario information beforehand prevents genuine testing of response capabilities.
The Consequences
The result of these practices is that organizations are ill-prepared for real-world disruptions. While plans may pass compliance checks, they often fail during actual crises, leaving businesses vulnerable.
Finding Methods to Create Higher Value Exercises
To elevate the quality of business continuity exercises, BC professionals must seek innovative and practical approaches that go beyond mere compliance and truly test organizational resilience.
- Incorporate Real-World Events:
- Use recent incidents like the Crowdstrike outage as case studies for exercises. Analyze the event in detail, including how it unfolded and its impacts. Develop scenarios based on these real-world events to test your organization’s response to similar crises.
- Engage Cross-Functional Teams:
- Involve various departments and critical business units in exercises to ensure comprehensive testing. This approach not only identifies weaknesses across the organization but also fosters collaboration and communication among different teams.
- Simulate Extended Disruptions:
- Design exercises that simulate long-term disruptions, not just short-term incidents. This helps test the organization’s ability to sustain operations over prolonged periods and reveals gaps in long-term resilience strategies.
- Introduce Unexpected Elements:
- During exercises, introduce unplanned variables to challenge participants and test their adaptability. For instance, simulate a secondary crisis or a failure in a backup system to see how the team manages compounded challenges.
- Utilize Technology:
- Leverage advanced simulation tools and technologies to create immersive and realistic scenarios.
- Continuous Feedback Loop:
- Establish a continuous feedback mechanism where lessons learned from each exercise are documented and immediately integrated into the business continuity plan. This iterative process ensures continuous improvement and adaptation to new threats.
- Scenario Diversity:
- Ensure a wide range of scenarios, including cyber-attacks, natural disasters, supply chain disruptions, and pandemics (Yes, we must not overlook Pandemics just because Covid feels behind us). This diversity prepares the organization for various potential threats and enhances overall resilience.
- Metrics and Evaluation:
- Develop clear metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of exercises. Assess not only the response time but also the quality of decision-making, communication efficiency, and overall coordination. Use these metrics to identify areas for improvement.
The elephant in the (room) tabletop exercise
The Crowdstrike outage highlights the need for robust, realistic, and continuously updated business continuity plans. By avoiding the pitfalls of tabletop exercises and adopting a proactive approach, BC professionals can build genuine resilience and ensure their organizations are prepared for any disruption.
To truly add value to your business continuity exercises, it is essential to embrace innovative methods, involve cross-functional teams, and continuously learn from real-world events. By doing so, you can transform your business continuity program from a compliance-driven exercise to a robust and dynamic resilience capability.
Are you ready to answer the email subject “Why Business Continuity Plans Didn’t Work”?