Enterprise Risk Management policies and their influences: Example 1 - Law Firms and 9/11

A comparison between two law firms that were based in the near area of the World Trade Center and their actions before, during and after the incident of the 9/11 terrorist attacks shows how enterprise risk management policies are playing an important role in the continuing of the business. Many did not only lose colleagues and friends, but their working environments and data that they needed daily during the attacks. In this incident, we can look specifically at two law firms that were involved. The first law firm did not have any business continuity plans, an important part of enterprise risk management policies. The data was saved in the basement of the World Trade Center Towers. Following the attack, the actions by management were disorganized, important data to ongoing lawsuits were not saved in a safe facility and it took months and copying materials from courts and rival law firms to update their data to their last state [1].

On the other hand we have Company B, who did not only have data backed up in a safe facility, but also a disaster recovery plan worked out. Within days, they moved into new rooms, restored their data, established telephone and internet connections and continued their work, thus reducing their monetary losses tremendously. This did not only save them much effort in regaining the data, but even prevented them from filing for bankruptcy [2].

In essence, an early investment in disaster management and checking that the policies regarding the risks can help a company to recover in an extremely shorter time from an incident than without and that testing the steps through an audit can help to identify weaknesses in the policies.

References:

[1] ZDNet, "How 9/11 changed disaster planning", September 11, 2002, http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/it-strategy/2002/09/11/how-911-changed-disaster-planning-2122113/
[2] BNet, "A disaster plan in action: How a law firm in the World Trade Center survived 9/11 with vital records and employees intact", http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3937/is_200305/ai_n9260326/?tag=content;col1