Pressure is growing on smaller and medium sized businesses
to ensure they have business continuity plans in place, following
Police warnings that firms are unprepared for a terrorist
attack.
Half the firms in the City of London have not taken practical steps
to ensure they can continue operations following a terrorist
incident, the commissioner of the City of London police warned last
week.
Although most large firms have plans in place, smaller and medium
sized firms often feel they lack the time and the money, to invest
in their own business continuity plans, City of London
counter-terrorism officers said.
But increasing efforts by large organisations to ensure the
continuity of the supply chains, new legislation, and the
development of a new British standard, will mean that SMEs will no
longer be able to ignore business continuity.
The Bank of England and the Treasury are working with 60 major City
organisations, on the Resilience Benchmarking Project, which aims
to assess how the UK's financial system would react to a major
disruption.
Lloyd's insurance market is conducting a review of all 44 Lloyd's
managing agents and working with them to ensure they have the right
emergency plans in place.
In the public sector, the Civil Contingencies Act will make it
compulsory for local authorities and emergency services to put
business continuity plans in place by the end of the year.
The Act will have knock on-effects for SMEs which will be expected
to demonstrate their plans.
Next year, the British Standards Institute (BSI) publishes the UK's
first business continuity standard. Larger firms are expected to
use it as a minimum requirement for their suppliers. "Companies
further up the supply chain are going to be asking questions," said
Nicki Dennis, head of risk market development at BSI.
Major supermarkets are embarking on programmes to ensure their
suppliers have business continuity plans in place, and private
sector firms including British Airways are beginning to specify
business continuity in suppliers contracts, she said.
The National Counter Terrorism Security Office has also produced
guidelines and is working with trade associations, to provide them
with practical advice.