When PIXAR accidentally deleted Toy Story 2, the company was faced with a major disruption to its operation and a massive threat to its business continuity developed in the aftermath.

Business Continuity refers to the capability of the organization to continue delivery of products and services at acceptable predefined levels following a disruptive incident. Moreover disaster recovery refers to the strategies and plans for recovering and restoring the organizations technological infrastructure and capabilities after a serious interruption.

As part of its drive to raise awareness, ISACA Malta Chapter organised an educational event on Information Risk Management with a special focus on Business Continuity and IT Disaster Recovery. The presentation was delivered by Mr Mark Fenech, a specialised Business Continuity professional with more than 16 years experience in IT.   

ISACA believes that as the pace of change in information technology accelerates, business continuity management (BCM) continues to evolve rapidly within enterprises to meet increased market and regulatory demands. Significant business and technology changes need to be assessed by the organisation from many perspectives, including impact on existing processes, associated risk, and how technology changes can be leveraged to improve continuity capabilities. ISACA provides a number of toolkits, papers, and even audit programmes for professionals working in this area.

Mr Fenech also provided an overview of the risk assessment practice in line with an international standard that follows a five-stage process: the definition of context of risk, the identification of risk, the analysis, evaluation as well as the treatment of such risk. Furthermore Mr Fenech explained that when assessing risk and defining an organisation’s business continuity recovery strategies, one must not only examine the probability of something happening but also assess the impact on an organisation if that risk had to take place. Indeed, it is useless mitigating a risk that does not harm in anyway the organisation.

ISACA Malta Chapter will be holding another educational session on Thursday 13th March at the Radisson Blu Resort St Julians at 5pm. A presentation will be delivered by Mr Nicholas Sciberras and Mr Ian Muscat, who are both experts in Web Application Security and Web Vulnerability Scanning. Their presentation shall provide an overview of the latest threats and incidents reported such as Dom based XSS and Email Header Injection.

More information can be found on www.isaca-malta.org  or by sending an email to the Board of the local chapter at [email protected].