The American Bar Association has announced it is the first not-for-profit organization in the country to be certified for disaster preparedness and response under the Voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Program, PS-Prep, approved by the Department of Homeland Security.
“Our nearly 400,000 members and the public can rest assured that the ABA can recover from a severe business interruption and continue to serve their needs,” said ABA President Laurel Bellows. “The organizational resilience that disaster preparedness provides is critical in an increasingly unpredictable environment of global terrorism and frequent natural disasters.”
Administered by DHS’s Federal Emergency Management Agency, PS-Prep is a voluntary accreditation and certification program that promotes preparedness standards and best practices for private-
sector recovery from natural disasters and other business interruptions.
“Private organizations play a critical role in ensuring the resiliency of our nation,” said DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. “I applaud the American Bar Association for achieving PS-Prep certification and strongly urge other private sector partners to work with the PS-Prep program to further enhance the readiness and preparedness of our country.”
In 2010, then-ABA President Stephen Zack and the ABA Special Committee on Disaster Response and Preparedness initiated a review of the association’s business interruption and recovery plan.
ABA officials said that led to the development of a new, more robust business-continuity management system two years later.
Originally focused just on protection of data and information systems, officials said the new ABA plan is a more comprehensive, standardized mitigation of risks, broadened to include operational risk management and multi-year budgeting, not only for technology systems but also for people, facilities and third parties for critical operations.
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