Dennis Martin

Introduction: One of the world's leading cheese manufacturers approached Fernao Business Resilience to ensure their operations remained resilient in the face of disruptions. This case study delves into the practical journey of developing an IT-Service Continuity Management (IT-SCM) system to meet this challenge. The Challenge: Our client, a global cheese manufacturer, operates across Europe and in countries such as Australia and the United States. They rely on their IT department for critical functions, including production site management, laboratory quality control, internal IT support, SAP systems, and more. Downtime, for them, wasn't just a matter of inconvenience—it directly threatened production, revenue, and the brand's reputation. They realized the need for a structured approach to resilience. Prior attempts to establish an IT-SCM in-house revealed resource limitations, the complexity of navigating technical aspects without a clear strategy, and limited internal expertise. With nearly 6000 employees globally, they sought a smooth, expert-guided [...]

How to deal with a ransomware attack: a quick guide A ransomware attack can be an existential threat to any organization. Dealing with an attack takes weeks and months of hard work and leads to a significant loss of earnings: The attack on Norsk Hydro in 2019 cost around $71 million, the Maersk attack affected global supply chains and lead to losses of around $300 million. Preventing Ransomware attacks is possible and should be the aim of any cyber security strategy, but every organisation should also have a plan for dealing with an attack when it does occur despite best efforts at preventing it. The points below are a basic guide on dealing with a ransomware attack. You can use the 'ask yourself' prompts to help develop or improve a response plan. Technical / organisational Isolate and contain the infection: It is essential to isolate the infected device [...]

High availability and disaster recovery: What lies ahead for IT in 2022 In 2021, IT teams had to cope with enormous changes and protect their critical operations against unprecedented threats from Covid, natural disasters, supply chain disruptions and staff shortages. Many moved mission-critical systems to the cloud and hybrid cloud and implemented advanced, application-specific high-availability clustering and disaster recovery solutions. The impact of global change and looming threats continues. What do these changes mean for IT in the coming year? Here are some predictions to consider. Multi-cloud infrastructures will become mainstream With the widespread adoption of cloud computing as a core component of today’s IT infrastructures, organizations will no longer consider a single cloud for their cloud needs. Despite the added complexity of running different workloads on different clouds, a multi-cloud model will allow enterprises to select cloud offerings that are best suited for their unique application environments, [...]