Continuity and resilience: how does ETH Zurich deal with them?
Risk management ensures that university operations run as smoothly as possible so that ETH can achieve its objectives efficiently. Part of this is business continuity management, which will be consolidated in the coming months. It provides measures to ensure the ability to act in crisis situations.
How can be ensured that university operations continue as smoothly as possible if, for example, a cyber attack has taken place or a building has been so badly damaged that it can no longer be entered? Risk management deals with such questions. It is of central importance for ETH Zurich in order to fulfil its core tasks in research, education and knowledge transfer effectively and sustainably, which is only possible with continuous operations. Risk management means recognising potential dangers at an early stage, assessing them and taking appropriate measures to ensure the security, stability and sustainability of university operations.
At ETH Zurich, the implementation of risk management is the responsibility of Vice President Stefan Spiegel's Executive Board domain of Finance and Controlling and has been an established process for many years. Staff member Yannic Kälin explains: "We have been in a multi-crisis situation for several years. Economic, geopolitical and social conditions are very challenging. It is therefore important that we deal with risks in the current situation consciously and with foresight".
Increase the resilience of business processes
Business continuity management (BCM) is one of the central elements of the overarching risk management. Its aim is to increase the resilience of ETH Zurich's business processes and infrastructure to disruptions and to support a rapid return to normal operations. Thanks to predefined processes, it can minimise downtimes and enable processes to be restored quickly. "BCM therefore only comes into play when a certain risk has materialised and caused damage," says Kälin. In contrast, risk management deals with the entire process of dealing with risks in an organisation that could affect the achievement of objectives.
“With business continuity management, we are securing the future viability of our university and creating resilience so that we remain capable of acting even in crisis situations.”Stefan Spiegel, Vice President Finance and Controlling
In order to increase ETH Zurich's resilience, the "Business Continuity Management (BCM) at ETH Zurich" project was carried out between October 2023 and September 2024. "With this project, we wanted to develop an up-to-date overview of the critical business processes and define the corresponding key resources and measures," says Sheila Elsener, Finance and Controlling staff member.
As part of the project, it was therefore determined for the prioritised critical processes, such as carrying out IT-supported audits, electronic lock management or ensuring internal and external communication via websites, what is necessary to be able to ensure the processes (key resources) and what can also be done to ensure the fastest possible resumption of processes in the event of a failure (measure names). The measures focus on the areas of IT processes, energy and media supply, which play a key role as basic services for most other processes. "We also wanted to create a basis to continue the topic at ETH Zurich and turning it into a regular process," says Elsener.
Consolidation and integration of the departments
This continuation will now be tackled once the project has been completed. Elsener and Kälin are working on a proposal for how BCM can be embedded in the existing risk management organisation in Finance and Controlling. "Over the next few months, we will draw up guidelines and integrate the data from the BCM project into the existing risk management tool," says Kälin. "It is particularly important to us that we also actively involve the departments in the process as a next step."
Parallel to business continuity management, the "Incident, emergency and crisis management" concept was developed by the Safety Security, Health and Environment (SSHE) department. Both topics have numerous interfaces and complement each other where necessary.
Further information
The risk management guidelines and further information can be found on the risk management website. Information on BCM will be added in the coming months.
ETH Zurich's Annual Report 2023 also gives you an insight into risk management.
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