Just when you thought that the Business Continuity (BC) profession had grown up and stopped quoting bogus statistics about the effects of not having Business Continuity Plans along comes another report trying to scare management with fairy stories.
This time the story comes from non other that the Business Continuity Institute (the BCI), which has published a paper called “Counting the Cost” as part of Business Continuity Awareness Week, in which the author states that “Figures show that 40%-60% of businesses without a BC plan never reopen after a significant incident, and the response for the first 10 days are critical to survival”. These figures come from something published on a website called visual.ly, and are totally unsubstantiated, as are all such statistics.
The author cautions the reader that “This report aims to be descriptive rather than normative. The figures cited come from surveys conducted by the BCI and other organisations (eg. IBM, Ponemon Institute, etc.), which also acknowledge the same limitations. Hence, statistical inferences cannot be applied to this data.”
If you can’t make statistical inferences about data, then don’t use the data! Pretty simple really.
Maybe, just maybe, some time in the future, the BC profession will grow up and realise that you can’t just go around quoting unsubstantiated statistics about the benefits of BC.
The Business Continuity Consultant 