What Hazards Can Affect My Business?
In many cases an organization does not consider the disasters that threaten them on a daily basis. It would be in each planner’s best interest to focus on regional threats that are most prone to your areas first. As a planner you should consider three specific high-level areas when discovering potential threats. Disasters fall into three general categories:
- Natural hazards include weather problems in both hot and cold climates as well as geological hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruption, and land shifting.
- Human-caused hazards can be accidental or intentional. Some intentional human-caused hazards fall under the category of terrorism; some are less severe and may be criminal or unethical acts. They can also include cyber attacks, rioting, protests, product tampering, bombs, explosions, and terrorism, to name a few.
- Accidents and technological hazards include such issues as transportation accidents and failures, infrastructure failures and hazardous material accidents.
This list of threats is not exhaustive and is important that you evaluate your company’s business operations, geographical locations, and other factors to assess potential risks and disasters that may occur where your business operates. Remember that BC/DR planning should involve people across your organization and that includes various locations.
Michael Herrera
Michael Herrera is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MHA. In his role, Michael provides global leadership to the entire set of industry practices and horizontal capabilities within MHA. Under his leadership, MHA has become a leading provider of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery services to organizations on a global level. He is also the founder of BCMMETRICS, a leading cloud based tool designed to assess business continuity compliance and residual risk. Michael is a well-known and sought after speaker on Business Continuity issues at local and national contingency planner chapter meetings and conferences. Prior to founding MHA, he was a Regional VP for Bank of America, where he was responsible for Business Continuity across the southwest region.
