Air gapped backups, contingency plans for failed internet or mains power and a paper backup of the disaster recovery contact and manual process records are now safely stored, all safety systems are in place and tested. There is nothing more to do. Continuity is guaranteed, business profits certain and a future well assured.

But wait let's consider the viability your business plan. The following "real world business plans" make the point.

In Wisconsin the justice system uses automated software to set the severity of issued prison sentences, for over 10 years. The software controlled decision making processes is not transparent to either its users (judges) or the recipient (prisoners). Thus all sentences issued in that period are being challenged and the software suppliers are in risk of losing their business.

TP-Link, one of the world's biggest sellers of Wi-Fi access points and home routers, "forgot" to renew their Domain Name. Their oversight temporarily allowed "criminals" to take it over, create a fake administration page to get clients to upload bogus Trojan firmware to their router.

Nurses, doctors, and other medical workers so often bypass information security controls in a bid to administer rapid health care that the shortcuts are taught to other staff. Entire hospital units have shared a single login for a medical device and passwords are plainly displayed on sticky notes everywhere.

The US Air Force's Automated Case Tracking System storing investigations from whistle blowers of waste and fraud became corrupted, rendering over 100,000 case files dating back to 2004 unreadable. Although the database was backed up, it did not have a tested recovery function. Investigations are now being done in the "hope" that the data was backed up in another uncorrupted location.

And finally, a car driver has been killed while using the Tesla Autopilot feature. Many Tesla drivers, including the deceased, had filmed themselves playing Jenga, Checkers or simply sleeping while using the feature despite specific Tesla instructions to "keep your hands on the wheel at all times and stay alert".

Who could have foreseen any of the above?

Failures in business are quite often neatly explained by Goodhart’s Law which states clearly: “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”. All of the above failures are in this category.

Would you like to discuss this further. Contact IVT at sales@ivt.com.au