Being Prepared: Makes Good Business Sense

With historic numbers of disasters over the last eighteen months, the concept of private sector preparedness has proven to be a continued indicator of good business sense. With the DHS announcement last week that AT&T Inc. is the first company certified to PS-Prep™ standards, we have reached another important milestone in this journey.

PS-Prep is a voluntary program that encourages private sector organizations to prepare against all-hazards, and recognizes organizations that adopt a DHS-selected voluntary preparedness standard.

Why spend the time, energy and cost to become certified? Certification to a preparedness standard helps businesses develop a culture of preparedness into routine operations and management processes. A culture of preparedness can safeguard organizational investments, enhance employee confidence, and demonstrate a high level of commitment to suppliers and customers, which contributes to the organization’s bottom line and reinforces the organization’s ability to provide services in the event of a disruption.

Certification will enable businesses to:

• develop a plan of action,

• minimize potential impact to essential operations,

• protect data and information,

• increase reliability,

• protect market share and minimize financial losses, and

• gain industry recognition by promoting preparedness with suppliers and clients alike....

The question quickly becomes – why not become certified?

Whether a company, academic institution, or other non-governmental organization, you play a critical role in our nation’s disaster preparedness and response capabilities.

AT&T is the first company to work towards industry preparedness best practice by taking the additional step of becoming certified. I encourage your organization to be the next. Visit www.fema.gov/privatesectorpreparedness for more information on the program.

Certification to a preparedness standard is a great tool and is one of many available to help organizations be prepared for all hazards. For general resources on private sector preparedness, visit //www.ready.gov/ or the //www.readyrating.org/.