As reported by the Associated Press today, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced its decision to raise the pandemic warning level for the swine flu from phase 5 to 6.

If your organization has not yet reacted to this global flu pandemic status by reviewing and testing its current emergency response plans, its business continuity plans, its crisis management plans, its disaster recovery plans, or its pandemic preparedness plans — this recent action by WHO should be a reminder that some action relevant to each of your organizations is now reasonably and responsibily required.

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Joan Goodchild, Senior Editor, of CSO Magazine, writes about the recent results of a new survey research report by AT&T.  In this report, it states that nearly a third of reporting companies have had to put their business continuity plans into action — with the most common scenarios still being extreme weather and power outages. 

When compared to earlier surveys, this report now indicates a strong trend for companies to put their attention not only to their own business continuity plans, but also to those of their partners and key suppliers.

With more companies allowing their employees to access social networking sites, a growing concern is now focused on the potential impact to network security — however, hacking continues to remain the biggest security risk to organizations according to the findings in this report.

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Justin Fogarty, Managing Editor of Supply Excellence, has written an article trying to address the potential risk that political extremism could have on our global supply chain.  The article is also a reaction to a recent poll quoted and reported in a story by  the New York Times  where it was stated  that “….(a) solid majority of people in the major Western democracies expect a rise in political extremism in their countries as a result of the economic crisis,” .

If you are responsible for managing supply chain risk in your organization, this article is well worth reading and will help you in your business impact analysis exercises, and planning so as to best align your business needs with these real global market supply chain potential risks.

Click here to read this article.