Finally, at long last, there appears to be some real evidence that Business Continuity (BC) works. After years of effort trying to debunk the 80% myth (80% of organisations that don’t have a BC plan fail withing 18 months of suffering from a major incident – or something similar), I’ve now seen some real research that demonstrates that BC does, in fact, have a beneficial impact.
The research takes the form of a study from IBM Security (conducted by the Ponemon Institute), which analyses the financial impact of data breaches. According to the study, leveraging an incident response team was the single biggest factor associated with reducing the cost of a data breach: saving companies nearly $400,000 on average (or $16 per record). The study also found that the longer it takes to detect and contain a data breach, the more costly it becomes to resolve.
Admittedly, the study covers only cyber security, but at least it’s a start. It confirms the long held assumption in BC circles that being able to quickly and effectively activate a response team to handle an incident is one of the most effective ways of reducing the impact of the incident on the organisation.
Now all we need is for someone to widen the research to cover all disruptive incidents. Anyone want to do a PhD is BC?
The report can be downloaded at http://www-03.ibm.com/security/data-breach/index.html.
The Business Continuity Consultant 