CW+ Premium Content/Computer Weekly

If there is one thing that unites all organisations that have had the misfortune of experiencing any disaster, natural or otherwise, it’s that they tend to have believed it would never happen to them. Indeed, such disasters can affect everything from small teams of independent developers to large multinational corporations. The number and types of disasters are increasing year on year, and can be broadly divided into three categories: natural, anthropogenic and cyber. Natural disasters are typically weather and geological events, such as hurricanes, severe storms, earthquakes and tsunamis, but can also include threats external to the Earth, such as powerful geomagnetic solar storms. Anthropogenic disasters, on the other hand, are much more diverse, and can be everything from riots and terrorism to fires, burst pipes and industrial accidents. The newest category of disasters is cyber disasters, which might be a cyber attack against an organisation, or a sustained loss of connectivity in the region. A typical example of cyber ...