I attended Spring World DRJ at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort during the last week of March. Their 56th conference had over 60 sessions with 75 speakers, split between general sessions, breakout sessions, workshops, and a Senior Advanced Track which was sponsored by the Business Continuity Institute. Disaster Recovery Journal has morphed from an IT disaster recovery conference to an all-hazards business continuity training camp. Some of the most interesting sessions this year covered topics such as:
- Linking cyber to business continuity
- Lunch with your auditors
- Effective risk management
- Supply chain resiliency
- Effective exercise design
- Using the Incident Command System (ICS)
- Active shooter incident response
My job at Micro Focus is to work with our sales teams so that they can have topical conversations about cyber security and risk management with their customers. At the end of the day, Micro Focus sells software and hardware. However, customers don’t buy software and hardware, they buy solutions to their problems – and unless I know what problems they are facing, I cannot help. This means open-ended questions and drilling down until I can understand the real problem – and not just the symptoms that the customer might think are his problems. Of course, as technology advances the problems evolve, which means I need to keep up with the latest trends.
Continuing Education Is Not Only a Good Idea, It’s the Law
I have a lot of letters after my name. Most of them require me to earn continuing education units or CEUs every year. But earning CEUs is not the point; earning CEUs which add to my understanding of the business continuity and cyber fields is the point. One of my favorite presenters and authors is Regina Phelps, who is the queen of realistic tabletop exercises. Her latest book details how to develop a realistic cyber exercise. And just like real life, you may not come out of an exercise with the perfect solution – but it will make you think (and perhaps realize how far you need to come in your planning!)
Step Right Up to the Micro Focus Chalk Talks!
Have you checked out the Micro Focus chalk talks? These are a fun way to learn about our solutions to many of your organization’s problems to build, operate, and secure your computing infrastructure. They cover a handful of different solution areas and each runs about five minutes. This means that they are easy to fit in when you need a kicker to help ping your brain when you are trying to address one of your work problems.
And when you are ready to chat with us, we’ll have someone waiting by the phone ready to solve your hardest problems. As a FTSE 100 company, we have offices all over the world.
