business continuity

Mont Blanc and the French Alps, the destination behind a lesson in contingency planning

None of It Was Mine to Fix: What a Trip to the Alps Taught Me About Contingency Planning

None of It Was Mine to Fix: What a Trip to the Alps Taught Me About Contingency Planning I’ve just got back from a few days in the Alps, and the getting there and back was, in its own small way, a masterclass in exactly the thing I spend my working life advising other people […]

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Venn diagram showing three overlapping types of risk — financial risk (ACA/ACCA), project risk (PMI/APM) and operational risk (ISO 22301) — with their small area of overlap labelled 'Risk: one word, several meanings

Risk means different things to Different People. That’s the whole problem.

I spent a chunk of last weekend scrolling through risk management job vacancies, out of nothing more than professional nosiness (and a need to avoid 24/7 football). It’s not as if the confusion over what “risk” actually means was news to me — I’ve spent the best part of two decades watching it play out

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Relay baton dropped mid-handover, illustrating a failed third-party contract handover

What the Sats Marking Crisis Tells Us About Third-Party Contract Handovers

What the Sats Marking Crisis Tells Us About Third-Party Contract Handovers Every July, Year 6 pupils across England find out how they did in their Sats. This year, a lot of schools found out how their exam board did instead, and the answer wasn’t good. Pearson took over the £180 million Sats marking contract from

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Fire extinguisher behind break glass panel in an office corridor — the emergency plan nobody reaches for

Your Business Continuity Plan Exists. So Why Did Nobody Use It?

In my experience, organisations that come to me for consultancy often share a similar story. They had a business continuity plan in place, sometimes one they had developed internally, sometimes one built by a previous consultant. Something went wrong, and nobody invoked it. Not because the disruption was trivial, but because nobody felt confident enough

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Aerial view of a stone architectural maze with a clear navy blue path marked through it, representing navigation through complex ISO standards

ISO Spaghetti: Why the Standards Landscape Is Confusing (and What to Do About It)

The five standards worth knowing about ISO Spaghetti: Why the Standards Landscape Is Confusing (and What to Do About It) I have lost count of the number of tender documents I have reviewed that specify ISO 22301 and ISO 27001 and ISO 31000, sometimes with ISO 22361 thrown in for good measure. Occasionally all four

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Aerial view of a large data centre on a flat Dutch landscape, a faint wisp of smoke rising from the building, a ferry visible on the water in the distance

A fire in the Netherlands, a ferry company in chaos, and a BIA that probably didn’t ask the right questions

A fire in the Netherlands, a ferry company in chaos, and a BIA that probably didn’t ask the right questions. The Brittany Ferries booking outage is a textbook case study in third-party dependency risk, inadequate RTOs, and what happens when your recovery plan assumes someone else has already thought about it. On the morning of

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Laptop with files and smartphone for GDPR employee training.

Cambridge Risk Solutions Shortlisted for Two Resilience Awards at the CIR Business Continuity Awards 2026

Cambridge Risk Solutions is delighted to announce that we have been jointly shortlisted with the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Local Resilience Forum (LLR LRF) for two categories at the CIR Business Continuity Awards 2026: Initiative of the Year Best Contribution to Continuity and Resilience These nominations recognise a major programme of work delivered through a […]

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