supply chain

Warehouse worker checking stock levels beside wrapped pallets, part of the UK's food supply chain, as storm clouds gather overhead

Stockpile the Tins. Audit the Supply Chain.

On Friday, the government told the country to start putting food aside. Environment Secretary Dame Angela Eagle said the UK is heading into what could be the largest El Niño event since records began in the nineteenth century, with sea temperatures in the Pacific running more than three degrees above average. The practical translation for

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Close-up of hands adjusting a small brass gear within a larger, intricate clockwork mechanism

A Forgotten Certificate Just Broke Email for Millions. That’s the Real Story.

On Monday evening, Outlook and Exchange Online stopped working. Not for one company, for a meaningful slice of the world. People couldn’t log in. Messages sat unsent. Search returned nothing. IT teams spent hours fielding calls from colleagues who couldn’t do their jobs, because the one tool most of us touch fifty times a day

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Grey trackside cabinet with dozens of black signalling cables fanning out into cable troughs beside a curving railway junction on an overcast day

One Power Failure, Seven Train Operators Down: What That Tells Us About Dependency Mapping

This afternoon, a power failure at a communications centre brought major disruption to rail services across the Midlands and north-west England. Avanti West Coast, CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, London Northwestern, Northern, TransPennine Express and Transport for Wales were all affected. Not one operator having a bad day. Seven, at once, because of a single point

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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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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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A framed certificate hanging on an office wall, slightly out of focus, with a laptop screen showing a security alert in the foreground

Does Your ISO 27001 Certificate Mean You’re Secure?

Does Your ISO 27001 Certificate Mean You’re Secure? After I published my recent piece on the GCHQ Director’s Bletchley Park lecture, a fellow practitioner left a comment that I’ve been turning over in my head ever since. It’s a question about ISO 27001 certification and what it really proves about security that deserves more than

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