Disaster Recovery Journal Spring 2023

swaths of a geographic region (rather than sites) suffer a loss of power or loss of internet services, BC pros will need to monitor how this affects the ability to deliver a service and possibly invoke a plan depending on the concentration of workforce in that region and the services they support. n Email surpasses both text messaging and phones for communication. Now, companies can assume their employees not only have mobile phone access but also computer access. As a result, email is the most popular communication mode (87%), text messaging falls to second place (82%), and phone is third (78%) (see Figure 8-2). We also found using an automated software is much more the norm with 64% reporting they have already adopted this software (versus 45% in 2021) and other 7% planning to adopt in the next 12 months. Invocations Are More Frequent; Communication Is Key to Successful Invocations In previous reports, we highlighted plans are invoked more fre quently than organizations would expect as in each of the years we have fielded this study, more than half of respondents had invoked a BCP during the previous five years: 2008 (50%), 2011 (61%), 2014 (53%), 2018 (75%), and 2021 (69%). But to see proof orga nizations are feeling the barrage of risk events, look no further than to the 81% of respondents who said they have invoked a BCP during the previous past five years – the highest reported number we have ever seen (see Figure 9-1). Consider that: n After pandemics, natural disasters/extreme weather and IT failure top the list again . Seventy-six percent of organizations invoked a plan due to a pandemic/epidemic which we can easily attribute to COVID-19. However, after pandemics/epidemics, the next are the same common causes of extreme weather and natural disasters and followed closely by IT failures and power outages as in 2008, 2011, 2014, and 2021 (see Figure 9-2). In our last report, we noted the importance of organizations not making the mistake of focusing solely on catastrophic disasters because in reality, extreme but not catastrophic weather such as winter storms, can be the culprit behind the frequency of power outages. Shortly after the completion of the 2021 report, the February 2021 Texas Electric Grid Blackouts caused a loss of power for more than 4.5 million homes and served as a great reminder of this.

18 DISASTER RECOVERY JOURNAL | SPRING 2023