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Information gathering is critical to accurately assess a company’s risks.
Although it is not necessary to use all four methods to gather information, it is necessary to figure out which methods will be most beneficial to the assessment. Four methods of information gathering include:
Questionnaires: Standardized questionnaires can discover data from specific groups or individuals. They help limit input and feedback to areas that will be most useful.
Interviews: Interviews can yield more information as opposed to the other methods. Interviews with subject matter experts can be extremely helpful in revealing needed information. It is also particularly helpful when subject matter experts cannot participate on the BC/DR team but whose input is still vital.
Document Reviews: Reviewing corporate and organizational documents can help identify threats, threat sources, and vulnerabilities. They can also be beneficial for understanding the company’s current critical processes/functions in an effort to properly prioritize later in the process.
Research: Research can be collected internally and externally. It can be extremely helpful and is often necessary to round out collected data.
The four listed methods should return the data needed to use as input to a company’s assessment.
However, it is necessary to choose the method(s) that will be most beneficial as too much data can off put useless or off-target results.
Michael Herrera
Michael Herrera is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MHA. In his role, Michael provides global leadership to the entire set of industry practices and horizontal capabilities within MHA. Under his leadership, MHA has become a leading provider of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery services to organizations on a global level. He is also the founder of BCMMETRICS, a leading cloud based tool designed to assess business continuity compliance and residual risk. Michael is a well-known and sought after speaker on Business Continuity issues at local and national contingency planner chapter meetings and conferences. Prior to founding MHA, he was a Regional VP for Bank of America, where he was responsible for Business Continuity across the southwest region.
