Data Management & Organizational Resilience: The Result
Posted on Tue, Oct 04, 2011
This is the eighth article in a series entitled: Data Management and Organizational Resilience. ASG is offering a series of blogs as well as a white paper that aggregates these blogs into one download, with the intent to make the case for data management and its correlation to the Organizational Resilience Management function.
When we look overall at successfully surviving an event we have to consider several factors for evaluation. These factors are the type and duration of the event, the organizations risk appetite, and the organizational level of preparedness.
Your event can be manmade, technological, or natural. What is critical here is the magnitude and duration of the event. Simple research will show that the longer it takes to resolve an emergency the more expensive it becomes. In fact, our studies show there is a significant spike in costs when an event lasts beyond seven days. In short the longer the span of time from onset to recovery the more costly the event.
We define risk appetite, as the amount of risk exposure, or potential adverse impact from an event, which an enterprise is willing to or has the capacity to accept. This is generally quantified using measures of loss or measures of consequence. For simplicity purposes we will use finances as a measure of loss. We measure loss using factors of low, medium, and high. Where a low loss is something that is budgeted for, a medium loss requires a reallocation of funds, and a high loss is a catastrophic failure where an enterprise cannot continue to exist without outside assistance. This point where catastrophic failure occurs is total value of risk appetite.
Given the above we have identified three opportunities for enterprise success:
Opportunity One - High Levels of Preparedness and Low Risk Appetite
Opportunity Two - Low Levels of Preparedness and High Risk Appetite
Opportunity Three - High Levels of Preparedness and High Risk Appetite
Download the complete white paper to learn where your organization falls in this opportunity for enterprise success. Our next article in this series will shift to explain the CSO’s Relationship to Organizational Resilience Management.
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