Business continuity, disaster preparedness & reputation risk management are crucial “to do’s” for businesses large and small. It is incumbent upon businesses to prepare, implement and test plans to protect against an incident – natural, man-made, personal. These incidents often destroy business systems and assets, negatively affecting personnel and any ability to bounce back to business-as-normal afterwards. Intrigued? Read on… Sam Shmikler, CEO of Resilient & Tested, LLC has the answers you need to know NOW.
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►Contact: Cynthia Ulrich / 425-830-9296 / ulrich.consulting@comcast.net
Resilient & Tested, LLC
►Sam Shmikler is available for interview.
►Sam Shmikler is available as a speaker.
NEWS RELEASE ~ For Immediate Use
What Would an 8.8 Quake Do to Your Business?
Business Continuity Expert Says Preparation, Planning and PracticeAre Key to Protecting Business Assets
March 9, 2010 – Redmond, WA: “If a business can’t resume operation within five days after a major disruption, there is a 90% probability its doors will close within a year. The key to recovery is for businesses to plan for resiliency and practice it.”
Thus says Sam Shmikler, CEO of Resilient & Tested, LLC, (R&T), a company in Redmond, Washington specializing in business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) for businesses throughout the Pacific Northwest. The firm helps companies survive catastrophic events – events that all too often cause too many businesses to fail.
For the past 20 years, Shmikler has helped numerous organizations, from start-up companies to Fortune 500 enterprises, plan in advance for emergencies, measure the potential impact of interruptions on business, and test to ensure the ability of systems and people to recover. In addition to the business sector, he is called upon to provide BC/DR consulting expertise to local, state and federal agencies.
Says Shmikler, “You can’t predict the crisis, but you should certainly plan for their appearance and practice how to come back strong.” He describes a crisis as an internal or external event that significantly impedes or stops the normal course of business operations. Such events include, but are not limited to: fire, earthquake, illness or death of a key company leader, IT breakdowns or sabotage, epidemic outbreaks, even attacks on the reputation of a business.
With a well-developed and practiced business continuity plan in place, Shmikler says any company in any sector of the marketplace, from the small “Mom and Pop” storefront all the way to large corporations, can not only survive an emergency, but once again thrive.
Prior to founding Resilient & Tested, Shmikler managed divisional business continuity and resiliency for Countrywide Financial and Bank of America’s global Post Closing and Servicing organization, the work of which included foreclosure, reconveyance, collateral and custodian operations. A high-ranking official in the Countrywide organization said of Shmikler, “Sam’s work was widely considered the gold standard for BC/DR (business continuity/disaster recovery) plans not just within Countrywide Bank (our parent company’s organization) but the wider Countrywide Financial Corporation BC/DR organization.”
Shmikler says the Resilient & Tested mission is to bring the continuity tools and technologies found in the largest global institutions to small business owners.
Rating risks, analyzing the infrastructure and processes within a business, and determining areas of vulnerability leads to the creation of a plan that rebounds the business back to normal operations with minimal effects in a short period of time.
Corporate entities for which he’s provided continuity plans have continued on with business in somewhat seamless fashion within hours or days of the emergency that occurred.
Testing a business’ customized plan in advance of a crisis is crucial, says Shmikler. His company creates the plan, then coordinates the tests, schedules IT, people, executive and process assessments so the readiness to recover is tested and reliable.
Resilient & Tested also offers reputation risk management programs. As with business continuity planning, the worst time to start a reputation risk management program is after the damage is done. Injury to business reputation is often more harmful than physical damage to, for instance, the company’s building or its IT infrastructure. Attacks on reputation can shake customer confidence and in some cases result in a brand becoming toxic.
From lawsuits to blogs, Twitter, Yelp, Facebook, look-alike web sites, and internet “spoofing”, a company’s good name, Shmikler says, can be trashed in a flash. While he has good things to say about search engine “alert” features, Shmikler says these kinds of alerts can be up to a month old in reporting and are, therefore, useless in responding to attacks.
Shmikler recommends creating policies and procedures for dealing with reputation threats including a list of “rapid response” actions such as prior media training for key spokes-leaders, briefing templates and useful documentation to assist in immediate response.
Constant monitoring all social media, blogs and the web for mention of a company gives foresight and better command of response methods and messages. Resilient & Tested’s procedures act to detect, analyze and respond immediately thus saving a company’s good name.
Resiliency plans are important for individuals and families, too, says Shmikler. Our experience is that our clients are more impacted by incidents in employees’ neighborhoods than incidents at the office.” Shmikler’s personal experience backs up that claim. In 2007, Shmikler’s family was forced to use their own resiliency plan as a California wildfire entered their community.
When the fast-moving grass fire shifted direction into the path of the Shmikler residence, his family put into action the emergency plan they’d practiced. In an organized choreography, the family (two parents and three children) swept through the house gathering specific tagged items including their most important possessions (two dogs, one cat, the goldfish, photos, medications, a file box of valuable papers, irreplaceable memorabilia, jewelry, computers, etc.). With everything loaded into the family van they set off for safety.
Their evacuation took 27-minutes flat because they had planned far in advance, had identified what was to stay, what was to go and had practiced the drill that got everyone safely out of danger’s way.
The next morning, because he knew his family was safe and secure, Shmikler was able to focus on the needs of his corporate clients who were drastically affected by the fire.
Shmikler’s credentials are impressive. He has developed, tested and implemented business continuity and reputation management strategies for Fortune 500 enterprises. He is an active member of the Association of Contingency Planners; The Business and Industry Council for Emergency Planning and Preparation; TITAN – The Intelligence and Terrorism Alert Network; and Infragard, an FBI/private sector information sharing and analysis organization. # # #
