The UK's year in business continuity disasters

All businesses should worry about how they'll keep going in the event of a disaster. But those disasters aren't always internal, they can be due to outside forces and can be hard to predict.

As part of this week's Business Continuity Awareness Week 2016 organized by the Business Continuity Institute, managed services company IT Specialists (ITS) has produced a list of the top 10 UK business continuity disasters of the last year.

These include the Holborn fire, which burned in an underground service duct and left 5,000 London properties without power. Other problems were caused by storms and floods affecting power supplies, and more unusual issues like the closure of the Forth Bridge in Scotland -- due to cracks in the structure -- which led to long detours and major travel disruption.

ITS compiled the list to help businesses understand the types of incidents that could affect them. It points out that without a thorough business continuity program, there's a risk of negative consequences including lost inventory, reduced productivity due to employees being unable to work remotely, property damage and of course revenue loss.

"Investing in forward planning can save valuable time, protect the organisation’s revenue and preserve its customer base," says Matt Kingswood, UK head of ITS. "We urge businesses to formulate a business continuity programme to identify inefficient processes that cost the organisation money on a daily basis and can prove a barrier to disaster recovery".

The full list of disasters is available as an infographic, click the image below to see the whole thing.

Image Credit: alphaspirit / Shutterstock