With 23 days until GDPR comes into force, credit reference agency Equifax is urging businesses to engage with their suppliers urgently. It says for any businesses using credit reference agency services – whether credit checking or identity verification, steps must be taken to ensure continuity of service. Data protection officer at Equifax, Steve Martin, says any businesses that share credit data that haven’t yet engaged with their CRA must do so as a matter of urgency, as it’s essential that they direct customers and prospective customers to the right information on how their data will be shared with and used by CRAs.

Quite a number of companies that I speak to tell me that their business continuity plan is to send everyone home and ask them to work from there in the event of an incident. For all companies these days, even regulated ones, a significant proportion of their staff can quite happily work from home. However, a core of the business still needs to work closely (physically) together. This is most often the crisis management team and core business functions and generally works out to be around 10% of staff, depending on the industry.

Some 57% of global organisations do not have appropriate visibility of subcontractors engaged by their third parties, according to a new survey from Deloitte. A further 21% are unsure of oversight practices, and fewer still (2%) routinely review the risk subcontractors pose to their organisation. Reliance on third parties, meanwhile, continues to grow.

The shortlist for the 2018 Business Continuity Awards has been announced. Now in their 20th year, the Business Continuity Awards recognise those business continuity, security, resilience and risk professionals whose innovative strategies and industry savvy make them stand out above the rest. This year's sponsors include Barclays, The City of London Corporation, ClearView Continuity, CMAC Business Continuity Transport, Daisy, Fortress Availability Services, Fusion, PlanB Consulting and Sungard Availability Services and Yudu.

Rothstein’s latest book aims to meet a critical business need with its structured approach to emergency evacuations. Writing about his own encounters with evacuations, author Jim Burtles expresses concern over the confusion that is so evident during an incident, and the widespread panic that can ensue when proper process is not put in place.

Storm Emma created some of the most testing weather conditions experienced in the UK for years, grinding many organisations to a halt and causing many to invoke business continuity plans to remain operational. It also exposed a number of shortfalls in plans, according to Databarracks. It says almost half of those organisations would have struggled due to their business continuity plan being outdated or recently untested. Its data suggests that just half of UK organisations are confident that their business continuity plan is up-to-date.

Weather warnings are expected for the rest of the working week, as the so-called Beast from the East continues to wreak havoc in parts of the UK. Hundreds of schools are shut, and road conditions remain dangerous up and down the country. Amber and yellow warnings have been issued by the Met Office, with London and the South East badly affected.

Former Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon has called on the government to spend more on Britain's Armed Forces, and at the same time, chief of the general staff, General Sir Nicholas Carter, pointed to a return of cold war tensions with Russia and raised the prospect of hostilities between the country and NATO forces.

The long awaited update to ISO 31000 has just been released. Chair of the iSO technical committee, Jason Brown, says the revised version of ISO 31000 focuses on the integration with the organisation and the role of leaders and their responsibility. “Risk practitioners are often at the margins of organisational management and this emphasis will help them demonstrate that risk management is an integral part of business,” he explains.

Inoni has launched the latest product in their suite of business continuity planning tools for SMEs. Inoni Micro, built specifically for organisations up to 50 employees, offers a scaled-back and easy to complete online tool for managing plans.

The large-scale cyber attacks that took place last year reaffirmed the need to build cyber resilient organisations, according to the seventh edition of the BCI Horizon Scan 2018, released today by the Business Continuity Institute and the BSI. For the second year in a row, the threat of data breach ranked second.

Good practice suggests that the best place to start is by having a policy that identifies what level of protection staff are granted. The norm is to adopt the highest standard of any country in which the organisation operates; for example, if your company is global and has locations in the UK and Cambodia, the company should adopt the UK’s approach to staff safety and security.

The key risks for rail (and similarly for transport) will continue to be managing the disruptive impact of severe weather events. This includes not just continuity of service but also the effect on the integrity of the infrastructure. Risk mitigations such as improving flood defences and managing drainage remain priorities. Maintaining high safety standards and reducing train accident risk will continue to be high on the agenda.

Security and recovery will rise further up the agenda in 2018. Malware and ransomware attacks will continue to dominate, with devastating consequences for affected businesses. With the widespread adoption of the Internet of Things, we will also see an increase in the number and complexity of endpoints, which could in turn lead to an increase in zero attacks.

Digital has so far been about pace and urgency. The race to embrace the fourth industrial revolution is still being run – but next year expect the early front-runners to ease up a little. Digital transformation is a marathon, not a sprint. And that’s good because it gives business continuity professionals the time to identify and mitigate the new risks that the digital revolution presents.