April 22, 2009—ASIS International has released its second American National Standard—”ASIS SPC.1-2009: Organizational Resilience: Security, Preparedness and Continuity Management Systems—Requirements with Guidance for Use.”
This standard provides a comprehensive management framework to anticipate, prevent if possible, and prepare for and respond to a disruptive incident. ASIS, the worldwide organization for security professionals, is an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) accredited Standards Development Organization.
The Organizational Resilience standard specifies requirements and provides guidance for organizational resilience management. It focuses on resilience—the adaptive capacity of an organization in a complex and changing environment, as well as protection of critical assets. The standard can be used to improve resilience performance, demonstrate a robust resilience program, and improve competitiveness.
Organizational resilience emphasizes the synergies between the functions of risk, security, preparedness, continuity and emergency managers. This avoids “siloing” risks and allows the organization to build both a proactive and reactive approach to managing risks, tailored to its size, activities, and business/operating environment, says the organization.
Designed to be business friendly, the standard uses the globally tested and proven management systems approach. It can be integrated with quality, safety, environmental, information security, risk, and other management systems within an organization.
