DRI 2018 – The Professional’s Conference (hosted by Disaster Recovery Institute International) was a fantastic opportunity for everyone to learn about the transforming landscape of resilience and business continuity. The Veoci team got to interact with experts and leaders, sharing our experiences and gaining new insights in crisis management, disaster recovery, and risk assessment. We caught up with Veronica Genao, Senior Account Executive at Veoci, to see what she took away from DRI 2018.
What sessions did you attend?
“I attended 3 different sessions… one was a case study with Humana Inc. on their experiences with the various hurricanes in 2017 from a large enterprise perspective. The other one was the Organizational Resilience System at the United Nations. And the last one was a breakout session titled ‘Women in Business Continuity Panel.'”
Humana Inc. & the Hurricanes
“[The presenter] actually went through their organizational structure on how they recently separated business continuity and crisis management into two separate teams, how they prepared for the hurricanes, how it impacted their employees, and what they needed to do to help their employees in Puerto Rico.”
“A clear takeaway from the various case studies was how essential activating a response sooner rather than later is. Establishing a point person—from a strategy and leadership perspective—to make key decisions when they need to be made was clear there as well. They took action quicker than others, who were more reactive; they were more proactive, which ensured their success.”
Resilience in the UN
“The [UN] presentation didn’t present on a system, but on a framework. One key theme throughout the DRI conference was the definition of resiliency, what that means in an organization, and what that means to a specific organization. How that [definition] can be impacted across companies, and how that’s going to impact the business continuity professional attending the conference were tied into that theme. They defined organizational resiliency, how they created the system at the UN, what their priorities were, and what their principles are.”
Women in Business Continuity Panel
“The [Women in Business Continuity] panel had women in various industries, in various organizations, and at various stage in their careers. One of the challenges that presented at the panel was the challenge that’s universal: getting buy-in from the c-suite. Everyone had a different perspective and answer on what that challenge looks like exactly, but building relationships within your internal organization was a common theme there.”
What topics kept coming up at DRI 2018?
“One thing that was interesting was that business continuity and crisis management are usually in the same team—but one thing that was very evident was that if you were there from an ITDR perspective, is that it’s a completely different discipline. Fully understanding those differences is extremely important.”
How do you see these fields changing?
“Historically, business continuity and crisis management teams have been in silos. Now, they’re responsible for organizational resilience. So it’s no longer working in a silo, but being a part of the strategy for the organization.”
“[Business continuity and crisis management are] really a need. People who are familiar with their crisis management discipline are becoming familiar with the business continuity discipline, and vice versa. And that could vary depending on that industry and the regulations of that industry, if there are any. Historically, there weren’t as many issues. People who never had weather-related issues before now have weather related issues. Cyber security/ransomware is prevalent in every single industry. Now these issues impact everyone, so it’s become a need.”
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