The Trend Towards End to End Crisis Exercising

In previous years the majority of our crisis simulations tended to be for the senior executives that tend to make up ‘Gold’ crisis management teams.  However, as Bob Dylan would say - ‘The Times They Are A Changin’.

With Covid-19 running into a second year our clients are turning their attention to also exercising ‘Bronze and Silver’ teams that deal with tactical and operational activity.  So why do we think this is happening:

-       With the prolonged ‘crisis’ period Covid has created, many Gold teams have recognised they need to lean heavily on Silver and Bronze and therefore want to ensure they are well trained and exercised.

-       Increased concern of cyber attack and high profile cases such as SolarWinds has led firms to review their resilience across the business in the event of a significant incident. 

-       Covid-19 has led to firms to question the focus of their recovery plans and playbooks. With home working capability now embedded at most firms they want to test their operational recovery plans against a scenario of operating remotely and without key systems.

At Crisis Solutions we see a future where there is greater integration of the Gold (Strategic), Silver (Tactical) and Bronze (Operational) crisis management teams within organisations with exercises increasingly involving multiple crisis management teams to robustly test capability across the organisation.

Such ‘integrated’ exercises take up a fair amount of time in design and delivery, but are invaluable in allowing organisations to examine the full extent of their crisis response in a fast-moving scenario.