Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Are You Prepared for an Active Shooter Event?

August 28, 2019 - An active shooter in your workplace? It may never happen, but you just can't be sure. For this reason, you need to be sure that you and your employees know what to do in the event such an event occurs. The articles below can provide some help as will the DHS video in #6. May you never need to put any of these actions to use.

The three things that DHS emphasizes over and over is either get out, hide out or, if necessary, take the shooter out. (Item #1)   Hiding under a desk might be a natural response to an active shooter in your building, but it may actually increase your chances of being shot. (Item #2)   Because active shooter situations are often over within 10 to 15 minutes, before law enforcement arrives on the scene, individuals must be prepared both mentally and physically to deal with an active shooter situation. (Item #3)

Technology can assist in your effort to detect and respond to an active shooter. (Item #4)  To recover from an active shooter event, restore business operations, and retain employees, experts say that business continuity planning, communication strategies, and personnel issues should be among the top priorities for organizations. (Item #5)   This Homeland Security video can help everyone determine what to do in the event of an active shooter event. (Item #6)

For the full issue, click here.

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Testing... Are you doing it?

August 7, 2019 - If you're not, you should be planning to do so. Once you have your plan, you need to see if it will work as you think it will. Better to find out now that someone in a key role will freak out than wait until that individual does so in a crisis. Or, if there are a couple of steps missing, wouldn't it be better to find out now that in a critical situation? Silly question, right? Testing/exercising your plan will help you determine if your plan might be successful, but even any failures will teach you something.

How will your business respond if faced with a natural disaster, a cyberthreat or an active shooter scenario? (Item #1)   It's only through a failover that you'll shake out the bugs and ensure that your alternate facility or alternate processing capability accounts for all the actual interdependencies. (Item #2)   You need to thoroughly scrutinize how well your plan performs and allow enough time to resolve any issues before they impact the ability to restore operations in case of an emergency. (Item #3)

Exercising is, to this author, about enhancing capabilities, your people and the resources they need to have to respond effectively and confidently in situations they have never fully experienced before. (Item #4)   This article attempts to provide some guidelines for developing and administering employee awareness training programs in organizations. (Item #5)    Regardless of whether you call it a test or a drill, these lessons learned, tips and recommendations will enable you to develop and facilitate value-adding business continuity exercises. (Item #6)


For the full issue, click here.