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 Sub-prime BCM certification in Asia In Asia, for example, you can become certified as a Business Continuity Certified Professional (BCCP) with no prior BCM experience if you fork out US 840, spend one day in a class and another half day answering fifty questions on a test. You do not have to answer all of them correctly. A fast-track bargain by any standard. Poof! You’re certified! Or you can become a Certified Media Spokesperson for only 800 bucks – in just nine hours! No examination required! I say, bring on the Exxon Valdez disaster. Your spokesman is ready. It’s silly and misleading to refer to those who take such courses as being “certified” in anything. Being certified in BCM should mean not only that an individual knows what to do and how to do it, but that she has demonstrated that she has actually done it in the real world, successfully. The same business that hires that a Certified Emergency Manager (CEM®), a Certified Public Accountant or a Microsoft Certified Professional should be able to assume that a certified BC professional can keep that business going when it crashes, keep employees alive and keep the boss out of Senator Sarbanes and Congressman Oxley’s jail cell. As some bankers gave sub-prime (read: “bad”) mortgages to some people who couldn’t afford them, some trainers in Asia are giving inflated BCM certifications to some people who aren’t yet ready for them. It isn’t a crisis yet, but you can sure see a bubble forming. This is an excerpt. Read the full article here: Nathaniel Forbes’ BCP Confidential blog and the Forbes Calamity Prevention BCP blog.
Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance Collaboration Tracking and controlling some of those diseases - malaria, dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue fever, cholera, highly pathogenic influenza (‘bird flu’) - in humans and animals are the missions of the Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance Collaboration, a monitoring and response-building effort in the Mekong Basin supported by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED) email alert program, World Health Organization, Global Health & Security Initiative, Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), Rockefeller Foundation, Google, and Rand Corporation. Click here to subscribe to the MBDS alert service or any other of ProMED’s alerts. Scroll to the bottom of the list of alerts; the Mekong BDS alert is the last one. Bonus: here is an excellent Global Disease Alert Map, pinpointing disease outbreaks around the globe. You can choose to receive data feeds to that map in English or Chinese.
You can buy a paper or digital copy of SS540 for SGD $47 (about USD 31.00) at the SPRING Standards Shop. Here is a preview of the first five pages. The content of SS540 is very similar to that of TR 19. The foundation matrix of Policy, Process, People and Infrastructure considerations for each component of BCM – risk and business impact assessments, strategies, plans, testing and program management - remains the same in SS540. As I guessed in my July article, SS540 contains a new section about the internationally-standard process improvement methodology, Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA), also called the ”Shewhart Cycle” after the American statistician Walter Shewhart who developed it, or the “Deming Cycle” after American quality guru W. Edwards Deming who popularized it. PDCA is also included in the British Standards Institute’s BCM standard BS 25999, and in the January 2008 release of the British Continuity Institute’s Good Practice Guidelines (GPG). It is not in the American Disaster Recovery Journal Editorial Advisory Board’s recent release of Generally Accepted Practices (GAP), developed with DRI International (DRII). It would be a mistake, in my view, to conclude that SPRING Singapore has abandoned its global ambitions for SS540. I believe SS540 could become the basis of a new internationally-recognized BCM standard. Keep an eye on the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) BCM standard proposed by American security association ASIS, an erstwhile partner of DRII in developing the GAP, now DRII’s nemesis in developing a BCM standard. This is an excerpt. Read the full article here: Nathaniel Forbes’ BCP Confidential blog and the Forbes Calamity Prevention BCP blog. Disco Lives! A hundred beats per minute is fast, as you may have learned by trying to move like John Travolta on the dance floor in the movie, Saturday Night Fever. And the proper rate for CPR is hard to remember when you’re nervous, trying doing it on the ground in a public place or doing it to a patient who is also your loved one. Unsurprisingly, most non-medical professionals do CPR too slowly, too gently, or both. The Red Cross has spent years trying to teach people CPR with mnemonics (“ABC” for “airway, breathing, circulation”) and Resusci-Annie practice dummies. Late last year researchers at a medical school in the USA discovered that people who listened to Stayin’ Alive while they practiced CPR performed it better weeks later without even hearing the music. At last, a business reason to listen to the Bee Gee’s. Download da disco to ya iPod.
Need help but can't afford a full-time BCP professional? We outsource qualified BCP professionals for as little as one (1) day or two (2) days per week on contract. Read our Capabilty Statement with case studies of our satisfied clients over 12 years. Nathaniel Forbes at nforbes@calamity.com.sg, or call +65 6324-3091 in Singapore (12 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Time, 8 hours ahead of London).
Need help? In Singapore, call: +65 6324-3091 Fax: +65 6324-3093 |
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