Are you ready for a really bad day?

When something goes seriously wrong with the data or technology a business relies on, the immediate priorities are obvious: understand what's happened, limit the damage and get things working again.

It's tempting to assume it won't happen to you. There are plenty who thought exactly that.

Drawing on real-life incidents – the kind of stories you hope only happen to other people – Alan looks at what happens when assumptions meet reality. It is often only under pressure that you find out whether people know who is responsible for what, whether escalation routes work, whether you can get the information you need quickly enough to make good decisions, and whether suppliers, systems, processes and controls perform as expected. Weaknesses and dependencies that have been largely invisible during normal operations can suddenly become very obvious indeed.

Far beyond simply having a mercifully untested incident response plan, anticipating what could go wrong and making sure people have the information, authority and practical ability to respond when it does can be the difference between a good bad day and a very bad one.

Too often, businesses discover their weaknesses by experiencing them. The response is then to fix the specific problem that caused the damage – effectively closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. But the lessons from other organisations' bad days give you an opportunity to ask the difficult questions before you're forced to: where are we exposed, what are we assuming will work, what would the wider consequences be if it didn't, and what can we reasonably do about it now?

Because a data or technology incident rarely stays a data or technology problem. The consequences can reach customers, employees, suppliers, operations, reputation, regulatory obligations and ultimately the commercial performance of the business.

Who is this talk for?

Business leaders and senior decision-makers who depend on data and technology to operate and would rather find out where they're vulnerable before something goes wrong. Particularly those who want to understand what real incidents can reveal about their own preparedness without becoming paralysed by every conceivable risk.

What will they take away?

Real-world lessons about what happens when data and technology assumptions are tested, the questions those incidents should prompt in their own organisation, and a more practical way to think about preparedness: not trying to prevent everything, but reducing the likelihood that a bad day becomes a very bad one.

About Alan

Alan Paterson is the founder of AIK Advisory and has spent more than 30 years helping organisations make sense of data, technology and information. His experience spans businesses of very different sizes, sectors and levels of maturity, including highly regulated environments. Find out more →