Businesses After a Storm

A business faces different threats as it operates. And these threats may force a business to shut down. That is why Business Continuity Plans are important to a business. Business continuity plans help companies survive natural disasters, economic downturns and bad publicity. It is a document that contains the critical information a business needs to stay running in spite of adverse events. 

A business continuity plan is also called an emergency plan. The ability of an organization to recover from a disaster is directly related to the degree of BCP (Business Continuity Planning) that has taken place before the disaster. Industry analysts claim that two out of five businesses that experience a disaster will go out of business within five years of the event.

A BCP need not be specific to terrorist incidents and apply to any major disruption such as a major fire, flooding or power fault. The plan itself sets out the agreed arrangements for bringing events under control, the necessary resources for maintaining critical business functions and the staff required for co-ordinating actions. It also needs to be clearly presented, avoiding vague internal references and abbreviations, and structured in such a way that people can quickly find and understand what is expected from them.

A comprehensive business continuity plan forces leaders to review the weaknesses and threats to their organizations from a detached perspective. While few business leaders want to focus on negative "what if" questions, the process of creating a continuity plan can raise concerns about employee development, real estate selection and intellectual property security. Tight plans can assure teams that company leaders understand how to turn on a dime during challenging times.

Consideration of risk is necessary; however, not all risk can be fully avoided, and businesses may need to accept partial residual risks. Business continuity planning is the tool used to manage these residual risks. Using the data derived from the process of developing a risk management profile, business continuity planning takes the next step by assuming that a disastrous event will, in fact, occur in the future.

Data Security versus National Security: Which is more important?

Data Security means protecting data from destructive forces and unwanted actions from unauthorized users while National Security, according to Harold Brown, is the ability to preserve the nation's physical integrity and territory; to maintain its economic relations with the rest of the world on reasonable terms; to preserve its nature, institution, and governance from disruption from outside; and to control its borders. It is state or condition where our most cherished values and beliefs, democratic way of life, welfare and well-being as a nation and people are permanently protected and continuously enhanced.


Now, the question is which is more important? Is it the security of an individual's data or what we call "Privacy" or the security of the nation?

National security cannot be achieved in isolation from essential rights. In order to achieve national security while safeguarding essential rights we must do careful consideration to see whether too much freedom is being sacrificed to attain a high degree of security. One good example of this case is the U.S. Government vs. Apple where in the government wants Apple to cooperate in getting information from San Bernardino incident's shooter's phone.

There are some measures that can be taken to ensure national security include: diplomacy to rally allies and isolate threats; marshalling economic power to facilitate or compel cooperation; maintaining effective armed forces; implementing civil defense and emergency preparedness measures (including anti-terrorism legislation); ensuring the resilience and redundancy of critical infrastructure; using intelligence services to detect and defeat or avoid threats and espionage, and to protect classified information; and, using counterintelligence services or secret police to protect the nation from internal threats.

A lot of things are to be considered when choosing what's more important between Data Security and  National Security. Clearly, we benefit from both privacy and security. But at some point, one needs to be sacrificed for the betterment of everyone. Government having total control over all information is a no but giving out an essential information for a certain case wouldn't hurt that much. Privacy needs to be respected for sure, but keeping the nation safe would benefit not just a single person, but it would benefit every citizen.


To wrap it all up, security of both data and nation is important. We just have to base on the situation given to know whether giving up data security would be worth it. One thing we are sure of, striking the right balance between the two competing ideals of privacy and security will be a big challenge for governments and the technical industry for the coming years.