Workshop Enterprise Security by our partner CAST e.V. in Darmstadt

21.02.2008 CAST-Workshop Enterprise Security
Moderation: Wolfgang Böhmer, TU Darmstadt
Main topic: Business Continuity Management (BCM)

The continuation of critical business processes is an enormous challenge for every company, especially in exceptional circumstances. This includes not only the traditional exceptional circumstances such as fire, floods, power outages, but also modern exceptional circumstances such as disasters. These can arise due to terrorist threats, bomb attacks, strikes, pandemics, data loss, computer errors. A well-known study by Oxford University on companies with disaster experience shows that 80% of those companies that did not have a management system for the continuation of critical business processes (BCM) had to file for bankruptcy afterwards. The remaining 20% of the surveyed companies only survived due to fortunate circumstances. Conversely, 80% of those companies actively operating a Business Continuity Management (BCM) were able to overcome the disaster.

According to this study, it is interesting and necessary for companies to establish and maintain a BCM. Furthermore, there is a need to assess whether and how well the BCM functions. It is important to determine which factors need to be considered so that the company does not belong to the 20% who could not overcome the disaster despite having a BCM. Questions to be considered include: How can the functionality of a BCM be assessed, apart from elaborate exercises? Are key performance indicators helpful in this context? Which standards are of interest to companies with a BCM?

For example, the British standard BS 25999 was recently published, which was extensively compared with practical experience. Furthermore, various method works such as ITIL, ISO27001, CobiT, and the latest standard from BSI™ (Bonn) Standard 100-4 also propose methods for Business Continuity Management. And ultimately, it is still the human who controls the critical business processes in an exceptional situation. What role does the human play? What is the often underestimated risk of human in this context? These and other questions will be examined by the CASTforum through expert contributions from research, practice, and business.

Registration at: www.cast-forum.de

Date:
21.02.2008

Duration:
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Location:
Fraunhofer™ Institute for Computer Graphics Research
Fraunhoferstr. 5
64283 Darmstadt

Contact:
Claudia Prediger, CAST e.V.
Phone: +49 (0) 6151/155 529