Vital to any critical industry is good business continuity planning where the impacts of delays can be more readily quantified. The need for effective business continuity planning is well-understood by business/security leaders. However, a rise in business interruptions due to natural disasters and other activities has brought the need for business continuity plan development and maintenance to the fore-front.

During the course of this workshop, the attendees will gain an understanding of some of the key requirements for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery. Topics such as the overall planning framework, Business Impact Analysis, operational recovery requirements, recovery strategies, plan development, testing and feedback mechanism and delivering awareness and training throughout an organization will be discussed. The speaker will expand on other topics that were not of any significant concern until very recently, such as terrorist activities and surviving a pandemic flu.

Service disruptions, delays in responding to customer requests, inability to process transaction in a timely manner or being able to resume business in face of a disaster can have significant impact on an organization's well-being. Recent natural disasters as well as terrorist activities have shown that an organization's resilience to a disaster and being able to resume business was directly related to its preparedness to respond to un-foreseen events.

Tom Walsh, CISSP, President - Tom Walsh Consulting

Tom Walsh, CISSP, is president of Tom Walsh Consulting, an Overland Park, Kan.-based firm that advises healthcare organizations on risk management strategies. He has conducted numerous courses on HIPAA compliance. Walsh serves as information security officer at San Antonio Community Hospital on an outsourced basis. He is one of the authors of a new book, "Information Security in Healthcare: Managing Risk," published by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.

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