Business continuity for the energy sector

While Switzerland's energy system is relatively resilient to energy security challenges, it faces ongoing risks from severe weather, terrorist attacks, technical failure and industrial action. These risks can be mitigated through business continuity management, but it is impossible to eliminate them altogether. Through our consultancy services, Resilience Guard can help energy companies boost their preparedness with business continuity services such as:

• Developing resilience strategies for critical national infrastructure providers
• Support with business continuity plans, crisis management plans and rehearsals
• Technical consultancy to ensure availability of critical systems and services
• Addressing compliance issues

Business continuity expertise in the energy sector

With customers depending heavily on power to run their businesses, business continuity planning is critical for energy companies. The speed with which an energy supplier can return to business as usual will have a huge influence on recovery times for the wider business community.

Utilities have traditionally responded well to localised emergencies, such as power outages caused by storms. However, they may be less prepared for threats on a wider scale such as a natural disaster or cyberattack.

As a key part of the national infrastructure, energy business continuity is fast becoming a growing part of government-based preparedness initiatives and in certain countries, such as the UK, have a legal requirement ^[1] to plan to reduce, control or mitigate the effect of an emergency.

A delayed response can result in significant revenue loss, reduced production and reputational damage. After all, no energy provider wants to become the lead story on the evening news because it was unprepared to provide the basic utilities we all rely on after a foreseeable incident.

Effective business continuity and disaster recovery plans for the energy sector should address:

• Managing the crisis response efficiently
• Protecting employees and company assets
• Keeping the business running
• Keeping technology operational
• Validating business continuity programme effectivenes

By taking a strategic view of business continuity and disaster recovery planning, utility companies can address business and technical challenges to meet their objectives:

• Reduction in the impact of business interruptions by identifying mission-critical business processes that should be prioritised in a recovery.
• Rapid decision-making capabilities and communication.
• Balanced recovery strategy options, with a cost-benefit analysis.
• Reduced risk of potential loss of revenue and assets.
• Ensuring the resilience of systems, applications and business processes is aligned to actual business needs.
• Mitigated risk and improvement in recovery times.

Contact us to discuss how we could help your organisation.