Toronto Symposium April 16, 2026

Business continuity planners have a tangible impact on business continuity laws, but they don’t necessarily know it. They also experience significant pushback against the business continuity programs they are tasked with designing, implementing, maintaining and/or auditing by the very organizations that hire them. This pushback leads to a general sense of impotence.

My research suggests that this very feeling drives advocacy and innovation within the field of business continuity. What’s more, analysis of the various laws\and standards associated with business continuity showsthat business continuity planners have a clear and tangible impact on the legal landscape: many Canadian laws that mandate business continuity planning use language lifted directly or clearly adapted from ISO and CSAGroup standards, as well as from DRI and BCI best practices.

In this presentation, I will walk you through a global scan of business continuity laws, and provide a high-level assessment of Canadian, Australian and British laws. We'll then pivot to my interview findings: getting a sense of what checkbox culture is, and how it drives innovation in practice.

We'll close off the session by diving into the specific laws that aligned particularly with the relevant standards and professional guidelines. You'll leave excited and better equipped to manage crises and drive resilience!

This session challenges the assumption that tabletop exercises are inherently strategic. While many effectively validate governance and processes, fewer test how leaders make decisions under pressure. Drawing on real-world experience, it introduces a practical approach to designing exercises that incorporate constraint, trade-offs, and consequence - exposing leadership dynamics, decision-making, and organizational risk to deliver insights that traditional exercises often miss.

Business Continuity exercising is one of the most critical — and most misunderstood components of an effective Business Continuity Management program. While organizations invest heavily in plans, frameworks, and strategies, the true measure of resilience lies not in the elegance of documentation, but in demonstrated performance under stress. This session focuses on how to design and evaluate business continuity and incident response exercises using lean, measurable, and maturity-based methodologies. Rather than treating exercises as compliance checkboxes or subjective discussions, participants will learn how to apply structured protocols and performance metrics that assess how exercise results compare from planned outcomes to actual results.

The presentation emphasizes that the goal of exercising should not be “pass or fail,” but rather an evidence-based evaluation of how well the organization performed against its intended outcomes. By comparing what happened with what should have happened, organizations can transform tabletop exercises from theoretical discussions into powerful tools for continuous improvement and operational readiness. In an environment of rapidly evolving threats, engaging operational staff is not optional — it is a moral imperative to ensure real-time adaptability and effective crisis response.

Grounded in the core principle of business continuity — sustaining the delivery of critical products and services at acceptable, predefined levels following disruption — this session reframes exercising as a strategic capability rather than a procedural obligation. Inspired by Winston Churchill’s observation, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results,” attendees will leave with practical tools and frameworks to ensure that their business continuity strategies are not only well designed but can be measured for continuous improvements.

In today’s unpredictable environment, a well-documented Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is only as effective as the team’s ability to execute it under pressure. Tabletop exercises (TTXs) offer a low-risk, high-impact method for internal teams to rehearse their response to disruptive events, identify gaps, and build confidence in their crisis management capabilities. This session explores best practices for designing and facilitating impactful TTXs tailored to internal stakeholders, drawing on the latest guidance from DRI International’s Professional Practice Eight.

Attendees will gain a step-by-step framework for planning and executing TTXs, from setting clear objectives and crafting realistic scenarios to managing participant roles, injects, and debriefs. The session will highlight facilitation techniques that foster inclusive participation, maintain engagement, and ensure productive discussions.

Whether you’re launching your first tabletop or refining a mature exercise programme, this session will equip you with practical tools. Join the session to learn how to transform your BCP from a static document into a living, tested capability, ensuring your teams are prepared to respond swiftly and effectively when it matters most.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping how Business Continuity Management (BCM) programs are designed and operated. Moving beyond traditional approaches that rely on manual data collection, workshops, and static documentation.

While these methods remain valid, they struggle to keep pace with modern digital environments. AI enables us to process large volumes of data, detect risk patterns, and continuously monitor critical services in near real time. For example, AI-driven interfaces can consolidate BCM data into intuitive dashboards and instantly generate gap analyses aligned to standards like ISO 22301.

By embedding AI into BCM programs, organizations gain predictive insights, automation, and enhanced decision support, shifting from static planning to dynamic, continuous resilience that anticipates disruptions and improves response effectiveness.