Business Continuity Institute South East of England Forum

Management Committee

10am 5 January 2016

FICO Offices, 5th Floor East, Cottons Centre, Hays Lane, London SE1 2QP

Minutes

Attendees

Jim Barrow, Chair (Outgoing)

Mark Suttle, Chair (Incoming)

Richard Verrinder, Vice Chair

Brian Kinch, Secretary

Adrian Jolly, Committee Member

Apologies

None

Absences

Nick Heaton, Committee Member

Welcome and refreshments

JB thanked BK and FICO for accommodating the meeting and welcomed everyone to the meeting, wishing them a Happy New Year

Annual General Meeting Formalities

Statutory officers:

JB indicated that he was happy to stay as Chair if no-one else wanted to take over but, in that he is now far less involved in continuity matters than previously, he would willingly relinquish if someone wanted to step up.

MS enquired and was satisfied as to the likely commitments of the Chair role and indicated a willingness to stand. JB therefore withdrew his intent to stand and BK proposed and RV seconded the proposal of a new Chair.

JB congratulated MS on his new appointment and agreed to offer every support throughout and across transition “from the wings” by staying on as a Committee Member.

BK expressed, on behalf of the Committee and the Forum generally, sincere thanks to JB for his tireless devotion to the Forum for the past 12 years under his expert stewardship.

RV indicated he was willing to stand again as Vice Chair and was proposed by BK and seconded by AJ.

BK, similar to JB, indicated he would stay in post if no-one else wanted to take over but was happy to relinquish if anyone else wanted to stand as Secretary. In the absence of any other volunteer, RV proposed and AJ seconded BK to another year in role.

BK indicated that, in light of NH’s continuing absence on extended retirement travel, and lack of contact generally, it may be time to consider suggesting that he formally step down from the Committee. It was agreed that BK should approach NH and suggest that we make him a “copy party only” to papers with a deadline for reply, at which point NH’s position on the Committee would otherwise lapse.

Action 1: BK to write to NH in this regard

The Committee considers the time is right to look at introducing new Committee Members and BK is to chase those who previously indicated a willingness to become more involved to see if they are still interested.

Action 2: BK to write to Russ Timpson and Chris Aldred in this regard

Action 3: JB to follow up with Kandice Callender in this regard

MS asked whether there are any conditions for being a Committee Member? In particular he is considering areas of diversity and also ensuring representation from suitable sectors, including IT, retail, manufacturing, etc. BK indicated that there is a Forum Governance that JB has previously

signed but this has a series of very “loose” terms, see attached. It is unclear whether this will have changed/superseded the Terms of Reference originally created at inception of the Forum back in 2003.

Action 4: BK to try to retrieve original TOR and recirculate for Committee evaluation and update.

Action 5: JB to advise BCI Central Office of the change of Chair and to see whether MS needs to re-sign the Forum Governance

The Committee, subject to Forum Governance and (amended as appropriate) TOR documents believes that the complement should extend to a maximum of 8 Committee (including Statutory) Members, with a minimum of 4 including at least two of the Chair, Vice Chair or Secretary in order to be quorate.

RV suggested that, if circumstances so dictate, greater interest from constituent members may warrant the establishment of dedicated sub-committees too.

Future Meeting Schedule

This has already been publicised and agreed as 3rd Friday each year:

- In March (18th in 2016)- In July (15th in 2016)- In October (21st in 2016)- In December (16th in 2016)

Leveraging BCI Central Office

There was a general discussion about how meetings (past, present and future) can be best communicated to member constituents in that the current Forum website (http://www.continuitysoutheast.org.uk/) has largely fallen into a level of disrepair because some of the links established to materials about the Forum, that used to be held on the BCI website, have become defunct since the BCI website was arbitrarily updated. Indeed there is now a very, very limited Forum presence on the BCI website and to re-establish more of our own presence as a Forum might become either cost of technically prohibitive

The Committee discussed the use of “free resource” portals such as Drop Box and Linked In Groups but the potential audience would be very limited and there would be little or no promotion to speculative or new constituents.

Action 6: MS, as new Chair, to arrange a meeting with David West to see how BCI Central Office can help the Forum and to seek confirmation of any available funds. JB is helping him target the scheduled March meeting, which will be held at M&G, Governors House, 5 Laurence Pountney Hill, London EC4R 0HH

Leveraging Sponsorship

BK reiterated that FICO would continue to be willing to support BCI Forum Management Committees and Member Events, but that this will typically be in return for an agreement that FICO can promote both association with the BCI Forum and relevant activities. Generally this is accepted by the Committee - especially in that there is an expectation that most other “sponsors” (if they were sought) would be far more demanding - but may have to be enshrined, along with other sponsorship terms, formally in any revised TOR

Action 7: BK to ensure TOR and/or Governance adequately covers sponsorship requirements

The Committee debated whether, rather than providing vendors mainly/only with a platform and means of accessing the burgeoning Forum membership numbers, a better approach would be to have certain vendor representatives either join the Committee or simply attend Forum meetings as an equal contributor. One such highly visible example in our constituency would be Everbridge. It was agreed that this issue should be flushed out as part of the evaluation and update from Action 4 and as part of Action 7, above.

Future Meeting Content

A lengthy discussion ensued on how each forthcoming meeting in 2016 should be prepared for, with the following conclusions drawn:

- The March meeting is going to focus purely on the Committee meeting with David West at the M&G offices as detailed above. See Action 6

- The July meeting is likely to be the “main event” of the year for the Forum with the working premise that, for 2016, this should focus on cyber-security issues as the “hot topic”

Action 8: AJ to explore suitability of running a cyber-security/compromise event utilising IFDS contacts with experience in forensic management of such incidents

Action 9: BK to reach out to Peter Wood, CEO at First Base Technologies who run the industry “White Hats” initiative, to see if he would be willing to also present on cyber issues

Action 10: AJ and BK to bring a joint proposal for a cyber-security/compromise event back to the March meeting for Committee consideration

- The October meeting, subject to determination of the need for (and suitability within any revised TOR) of vendor support, is likely to focus upon giving an audience to ARM, possibly owing to proximity in conjunction with First Recovery in Cambridge, or to Continuity2 and other vendors in London, the latter potentially leveraging the offer from Regus at the BCI AGM of free space at their premises for such meetings. The working title for October is currently “How to use technology to aid recovery”.

Action 11: RV to reach out to Eren Aslan at ARM to see if he would still be interested if we were to potentially target an October date (subject to Committee ratification)

Action 12: JB to check whether First Recovery would be interested in a joint event with ARM if we were to potentially target an October date (subject to Committee ratification)

Action 13: JB to write to Lorna (surname?) at Continuity2 to introduce her to MS as the new Chair and to query whether she would still be interested if we were to potentially target a multi-vendor event (subject to Committee ratification)

Action 14: JB to reach out to Sean O’Reilly at Regus regarding arrangements for accessing free space

- The December meeting is likely to be more of a “general discussion” meeting rather than formal presentations, trialling the same sort of approach that had been seen to work quite successfully in other Forums in the UK (per RV’s discussions with Ian Charters)

Action 15: JB to approach “regular” regular authors/contributors to the Continuity magazine to see if they would be willing to help come along and talk to interesting and topical issues at the December event (subject to Committee ratification)

Any Other Business

Depending upon the decisions reached on sponsorship, vendors and multi-vendor events, BK suggested that it be made clear to any vendors that we as a Forum cannot be held responsible for things like the number of attendees per event. It was agreed that this should be covered should be as part of the evaluation and update from Action 4 and as part of Action 7, above.

MS is keen to ensure that each event is discrete in itself i.e. not combining topics that have no natural alignment such as cyber and vendor software (unless the latter relates to malware or intrusion protection, detection and prevention).

Being no further business the meeting was closed at 1230pm followed by a belated Christmas lunch, courtesy of FICO.