Scottish businesses are not doing enough to guard against terrorist attacks, natural disasters or even simple break-ins, delegates will be told at a conference in the Caird Hall, Dundee, on Thursday.

Following the flooding in New Orleans and the London bombings, companies will be urged to do more to safeguard their businesses at the Resilient Community Exercise, organised by the Scottish Continuity Group.

Emergency services and local organisations, including Tayside police and Scotland Online will join forces at the event to stress the importance of business continuity planning and outline what steps should be taken to ensure a company can continue to trade in the event of a terrorist attack or a disaster.

A survey by the London Retail Consortium found that trade in the city fell 8.9% in the immediate wake of the bombings and left a number of companies facing bankruptcy.

Alan Dawson, a board member of the Scottish Continuity Group and business continuity development manager at Scotland Online, is concerned that not enough companies in Scotland are investing in simple contingency measures.

“What we are trying to do through the Resilient Community Exercise is to create awareness amongst both public and private sector organisations of the importance of having such plans and providing them with the know-how on how to shape them,” he said.

National Australia Group, Standard Life and the Prudential are just some of the companies which will be at the event.

They will be presented with a disaster scenario to test their capabilities.

Scottish Continuity Group chairman Niall Kinloch added, “The Resilient Community exercises have proved to be very successful in the past. For businesses or organisations which have no plans they provide a good insight into what could happen if a disaster struck, even if their organisation is not directly impacted by the event.

“For those with plans already in place the exercise provides an excellent opportunity to put them into practice and to gain an understanding of the plans of other local organisations and the crisis incidents that the emergency services have to deal with.”

Tayside Chief Constable John Vine said, “Building a secure business is not just about supply and demand; it is about the protection and prevention measures you can put in place against crime, the consequences of a natural disaster, electronic attack, acts of terrorism and other events that would have an impact on your business.

“Businesses can do much to reduce vulnerabilities by taking time to review their preparedness to deal with emergencies and put simple and often inexpensive security measures in place.

“From the basics of identifying where your business is vulnerable to making sure you have suitable IT security such as passwords and making sure your key suppliers have plans in place to continue business if they are the ones affected.”

The Scottish Continuity Group was formed in 1995 to enable the free flow of information on best practice in business continuity management in Scotland.