The 2019 Business Continuity Awards finalists have been announced. Now in its 21st year, the Business Continuity Awards recognise those business continuity, security, resilience and risk professionals whose innovative strategies and industry savvy make them stand out above the rest.

By customising an active shooter plan that focuses on prevention, training, feedback and post-incident protocols, employees will be mentally and physically prepared to react to violent threats, according to RIMS new report.

The Department for International Trade has issued an update on trade continuity after Brexit. Nearly half of the UK's trade is currently with the EU; a further 11% is covered by the existing EU trade agreements the government is looking to continue as bilateral deals after Brexit. The 20 smallest of these agreements account for just 0.8% of UK trade. The remaining 40% of trade takes place with other countries.

ISO has released the official ISO 22301 Draft International Standard for Public Comment (DIS). BSI, as the UK’s National Standards Body, is seeking to consult with continuity and resilience practitioners, managers, and other interested parties to participate in this review aimed at improving this standard.

The Financial Conduct Authority has today set out how it will use temporary transitional power in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Intended to minimise disruption for firms and other regulated entities, the Treasury has put forward draft legislation that would make transitional provisions if the UK leaves the EU without a withdrawal agreement.

The insurance sectors of the UK and Switzerland are set to continue trading freely with one another after the UK has left the EU. The new arrangement will replicate the effects of the existing EU agreement with Switzerland and will come into force when the current EU-Swiss Direct Insurance Agreement ceases to apply to the UK.

A growing number of local authorities are reportedly struggling to ‘balance the books’. Austerity has been with local government for eight years. Many council officers have identified that this point has been arrived at by a gradual process that has chipped away at the essence of local authorities – the services they deliver and the structures they use to do so. The accumulative effect, built up over years of budget cuts, adds to the anticipation around setting a sustainable budget. That becomes an ever more challenging prospect to finance managers, with higher risk levels and an increasing need to support the resilience of public authorities.

There are just a few weeks remaining to enter this year's Business Continuity Awards. Celebrating achievement in business continuity, security and resilience, the Business Continuity Awards are the most anticipated event in the industry calendar and provides unrivalled networking, alongside a night of entertainment and celebration.

Business sentiment around the ongoing Brexit talks is somewhat frayed after the government lost last night's vote in Parliament on its proposed deal. Even if yesterday’s deal had been passed, our future relationship with the EU would still be unclear, and as it is, businesses are left with even more questions than they had before.

Amazon Web Services is reported to have acquired Israeli disaster recovery startup CloudEndure, in transaction that could highlight a wider transition taking place within disaster recovery, according to Databarracks’s Peter Groucutt. The MD of the business continuity and disaster recovery firm says he thinks the most surprising part is that it was AWS that acquired CloudEndure, not Google Cloud Platform.

Assurance Software has announced a merger with ClearView Continuity, in what together they refer to as a union of "technology and cultural synergies that will allow us to accelerate product innovation and enhance customer value".

The US Department of the Treasury and the Office of the US Trade Representative have announced their intent to sign a UK-US covered agreement. The agreement is an important step in providing regulatory certainty and market continuity as the UK prepares to leave the EU in March 2019, as well as in making US companies more competitive in domestic and foreign markets and making regulations more efficient, effective and appropriately tailored.

Business continuity and IT disaster recovery specialist, Databarracks, has partnered with Rubrik to add cloud data management capabilities to its offering. Databarracks managing director Peter Groucutt commented: “The combination of back-up, disaster recovery and archive in a single, scalable product is exciting and addresses a need we see from mid-market and enterprise organisations.

Chubb has launched a new service for multinational companies and large middle market businesses which combines its terrorism & political violence underwriting, risk engineering, global security, catastrophe modelling and digital expertise.

ClearView has launched a new business continuity training toolkit using virtual reality to create more immersive environments for participants. ClearView VR, developed in partnership with specialist VR company Phygital, brings the benefits of highly engaging and realistic virtual environments for business continuity education, exercising, and awareness raising.