Business continuity 2008: Middle East
The Middle East is witnessing an unprecedented boom thanks to spiraling oil prices. Governments and many major industries are flush with funds; the strategy tables are filled with future designs; and business continuity management has been slowly making inroads into the thinking of Middle East organizations. However BCM is still very much in its nascent stage in the region. In the majority of the organizations which have developed business continuity plans it is an activity led by the IT department, with the result that BCM is mainly seen as an IT activity. Many other business process owners and department heads refrain from participating in or contributing effectively to business continuity management; an obvious weakness and a clear sign of the immaturity of the market. Strange as it may seem, many process owners fail to realize the fact that not all processes are mission critical or critical for an organization to survive and it is often a daunting challenge for CIOs and IT heads, who have been forced to don the mantle of BCM leader, to assure the business and process owners that prioritizing of processes does not make those with longer recovery time objectives (RTO) redundant or of less importance than those with quicker RTOs. This may be a common phenomenon across the globe but here in the Middle East there is another twist to the whole scene; Middle East markets have been primarily driven by expatriate work forces. The inherent job insecurity may be adding to this sentiment. Another problem that I perceive is that when IT people don the business continuity management hat, the program tends to go off on a tangent towards being ‘information continuity management’. There is no doubt that information in today’s age is a key to success, however information availability alone is of little help if people are not available to access and use it during an incident or crisis. The make-up of the Middle Eastern workforce creates its own ‘human factors’ to consider. Since the Middle East market relies on an expatriate work force, how much reliability can be put on it? To cite an example I am sure many of us haven’t forgotten the Gulf War in Kuwait. One of the enduring memories is of ‘plane loads of expatriates making an exodus out of the country; taking their skills and knowledge with them. Think of a situation where we are besieged with a major wide-area disaster: would the majority of the expatriate workforce still be available to roll out business continuity operations? It would be interesting to hear from peers on how they have developed their risk management plan to counter such threats. Another problem faced by organizations are the laws (written or unwritten) that govern business activities. It would be difficult for many organizations to convince their management to place their business continuity operations outside their country. A lot of distrust exists and even in cases where companies have done so, it is probably as a backup to their master backup plan. Faced with this issue, one must question the effectiveness of many business continuity plans developed by organizations in such countries. Some of the countries in the region are so small that having a business continuity recovery facility inside the country is virtually pointless, should a major disaster occur. For example the UAE has an earthquake fault line that virtually traverses the country: from Fujairah – Sharjah – Dubai – Abu Dhabi. Having the main and recovery facility in the vicinity of this line would have its own inherent risks and would seriously threaten the effectiveness of business continuity plans. Author: Samir Pawaskar, MBA, B.E, D.C.E, CISSP, SBCI, ISO 27001 LA, CCNP, MCSE information security officer, RAK FTZ Authority, Ras Al Khaimah, UAE READER COMMENT Mr. Pawaskar is right on. Information technology is not the mother of business continuity. Business continuity is a programmed process to protect an organization’s people and assets to help ensure they can achieve the established mission.
•Date: 25th January 2008• Region:M.East •Type: Article •Topic: BC general |
