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"After a phone tunnel fire affecting 130,000 businesses including Yell, ICM's efforts helped us to be up and running quickly with minimal disruption"

YELL

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    • Risk Management Overview
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Risk Management

ICM proactively maintains a structured and comprehensive strategy to manage the risks associated with the provision of our services, including:

• Exclusion Zones – measured by ordnance grid for accuracy
• Voluntary Supplier Risk Declaration (VSRD) – providing transparency of all service information in real time
• Subscription Ratios – the lowest in the industry as standard
• Backup Facilities – secondary and tertiary business continuity centre facilities to call upon

Over-subscription of a business continuity service can leave customers fighting for space in the event of a wide-area incident, potentially rendering a contingency plan invalid.

The risk of 'wide-area' incidents is an increasing concern which is changing the risk dynamics of the business continuity industry. Disasters such as the major floods across the UK, the Buncefield explosion and the July 7 bombings impact numerous businesses simultaneously, affecting neighbours, surrounding infrastructures, transport and communications.

This effect on shared services has raised concerns about the sharing of other facilities, such as, if an organisation's business continuity plan needs to incorporate alternative workplace facilities, what if several other subscribers are already signed up for the same service? This is particularly pertinent if a business is subscribed to a shared or 'syndicated' workarea service.

How Does ICM Manage Risk?

ICM has a proactive approach to managing risk internally and to managing risk in relation to all of the services we provide, with an integrated asset management system. This means that we can ensure our clients of the best risk management in the industry and assure them that we go further than any other provider in reducing any risks associated with third party business continuity services.

ICM has several policies in place to mitigate the risks of syndicated business continuity services, including the use of the Voluntary Supplier Risk Declaration, low subscription ratios and exclusion zones based on the Ordnance Survey grid system.

We have a long-standing policy of providing not just secondary but tertiary centres to accommodate far-reaching incident recovery or the requirements of our largest multi-national clients, providing flexible roll-back options for each customer.

Allan Gerrish, ICM Governance Officer
MBCI BTech (Hons) Chartered Insurer

"Third party business continuity services are not something you can afford to be vague about in a crisis. Businesses must ensure that they obtain the information they need to remain certain about the third party business continuity services upon which their company's very survival depends.

In order to maintain awareness of the risk issues involved, customers should not only demand hard facts about subscription rates from their suppliers but also act on these where there is a valid concern.

Business continuity providers have a genuine responsibility to their customers to make it clear exactly how many subscribers are syndicated to a particular service.

However, suppliers can only provide and explain the information, it is the client's business continuity management who should act on it. But, senior management within the client organisation must remain accountable for deciding the cost/risk balance inherent in purchasing syndicated services."

Allan Gerrish, ICM Governance Officer
MBCI BTech (Hons) Chartered Insurer