I was clicking around online ordering my daughter's summer reading when a reading list of a different sort caught my eye: "Top 10 Books a Prepper Should Have." I figured you all might want to leave "Life of Pi" to my daughter and check out this list instead. "They cover everything from survival security, food preparation and health," says the site and include the potentially very useful US Army Survival Manual and the I-hope-you-never-need it tome entitled "When There's No Dentist." Get your beach book here!

Vendors: They Can Be Certified Too!

The Certified Business Continuity Vendor (CBCV ) designation was established to provide those individuals, who as vendors, recognize the importance of business continuity best practices in the field, but are not necessarily working planners. Sales representatives, support engineers, software specialists, and others who pursue and maintain this certification have made a decision to pursue the same professionalism as the customers they serve.

The CBCV designation is for individuals with some knowledge in business continuity planning, but who are non-practitioners within an organization; rather they provide services to the industry and have acquired the necessary experience for certification.

To apply for CBCV certification, all applicants must:

• Pass the qualifying examination
• Submit an Application for review by the commissioners to confirm the experience of the candidate

Any DRI International certified professional may enhance their certification by completing the application requirements for CBCV and you are not required to re-take the qualifying exam.  

When your application is approved, DRI International will notify you of your professional certification status and usage requirements for the CBCV logo and service marks.

Want more information, call us at (866) 542-3744 or click here.

That's what we asked in last week's one-question survey. We wanted to know where you thought the potential weak spot was. So we asked about hardware, software, site access, human error, supply chain and others.

Hardware and software combined took second place with 30 percent of the vote (20 percent hardware, and 10 percent software). But the big vote getter, the number one potential disruption, got a whopping 40 percent of the vote. To discover the identity of this potential trouble maker, and for the rest of the results and a discussion on the topic, visit our LinkedIn. You can find the rest of our one-question survey results there too.

This time out, we're using the weekly one-question survey to do a little research to help serve you better. The question is an easy one (for you) and informative one (for us). We're thinking about sending Drive to you on a different day, but figured we'd check with you first. So, click here to let us know which day of the week you'd like to receive your e-newsletter. It'll take a second and we'd sure be grateful. Thanks!

A New York Times article on the Fukushima disaster features a report by the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission that assigns "widespread blame" to the government, private sector operators of the plant (Tepco), and nuclear regulators.

"It was a profoundly man-made disaster - that could and should have been foreseen and prevented," said Kiyoshi Kurokawa, the commission's chairman, in the report's introduction. "And its effects could have been mitigated by a more effective human response."

According to the piece, "the 641-page report criticized Tepco as being too quick to dismiss earthquake damage as a cause of the fuel meltdowns at three of the plant's six reactors, which overheated when the site lost power. Tepco has contended that the plant withstood the earthquake that rocked eastern Japan, instead placing blame for the disaster on what some experts have called a 'once in a millennium' tsunami that followed. Such a rare calamity was beyond the scope of contingency planning, Tepco executives have suggested, and was unlikely to pose a threat to Japan's other nuclear reactors in the foreseeable future. "

"However," the report said, "it is impossible to limit the direct cause of the accident to the tsunami without substantive evidence. The commission believes that this is an attempt to avoid responsibility by putting all the blame on the unexpected (the tsunami)," the report continued, adding, "and not on the more foreseeable quake."

It's a great article and worth a read. Click here to continue.

DRI2013 will be held June 3-5, 2013 in Philadelphia. And we'd like to know what you want to know! Do you have hot topics or areas of concern you'd like our speakers to address. Want to suggest a speaker, topic, or approach? We're all ears. Eyes too. So, shoot us an email (brojas@drii.org) with your suggestions, ideas, and questions as we develop the program for the 2013 event!