Rob Cooke Email & Phone Number

Derby, Gb

Derby, England, United Kingdom

Founded Beacon Resilience & Continuity Limited which is a pioneering consultancy specialising in Operational Resilience, Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Third-Party Risk Management and Crisis Management. The company offers a comprehensive suite of services, including bespoke consultancy, a unique documentation toolkit, cutting-edge software solutions, and expert-led training. Beacon Resilience is quickly establishing itself through strategic partnerships and significant early contracts, aiming to empower businesses to build robust resilience frameworks and navigate regulatory requirements effectively. The mission for Beacon Resilience & Continuity is "Empowering Resilience in an Uncertain World."

East Midlands

Nottingham, England, United Kingdom

Contracting assignment responsible for the delivery of the group-wide 1LOD Operational Resilience operating model, team strategy, Op Res RACI and BCM migration from 2LOD to 1LOD. Authored the Operational Resilience and Business Continuity Management Minimum Standards and Controls to ensure compliance to the EU Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).Acted as a SME on DORA regulations for the LSEG Operational Resilience uplift programme ensuring that the regulations are understood and that frameworks, policies and processes are enhanced to ensure compliance in addition to supporting the Head of Group Operational Resilience who was building a newly formed team and employing a number of permanent resources, which required a strategic vision and established negotiating skill set.

London, England, United Kingdom

Designed and implemented robust operational resilience practices, emphasising human processes and technology, to ensure operational excellence and reliability. Strengthened the Third-Party framework to meet regulatory requirements by being integral to a gap analysis followed by creating a successful risk mitigation plan. Established a project plan for the operational resilience and outsourcing workstream to compliment the Bank’s wider target to meet its regulatory requirements for entering and exiting mobilisation and obtaining a banking licence from the UK regulators.• Embedded operational resilience in third-party onboarding, with a focus on selecting and managing vendors contributing to critical business services. • Constructed the mapping process for the Important Business Services ensuring that the understanding of the services processes, people, third-parties, technologies, data, and premises were clear and concise.• Supported the implementation of chaos monkey in the staging environment which worked to identify resilience gaps in the BaaS solution before being moved to production. • Collaborating closely with various teams across the company, ensuring the integration of a resilient mindset in their work.

Hatfield, England, United Kingdom

Designed and implemented a Disaster Recovery strategic framework for the group, including Policies, Procedures and Processes. Constructed SOC2 controls as accountable owner and developed a training programme to educate colleagues on a variety of resilience disciplines including business continuity, crisis management, technical disaster recovery, risk management, and emergency response. Collaborated with technical teams and clients on unique strategies that enabled the organisation to withstand different internal and external risks. Identified improvements for existing recovery solutions and created a new Disaster Recovery exercising regime for build and run operations. Contributed to and approved the development of new Business Impact Analysis’ and Business Continuity Plans, whilst maintaining close relationship between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery teams. Subject Matter Expert in delivering enhanced data resilient solutions and cyber resilience programmes.• Service Resilience Manager for providing assurance and governance advice on SOC2, Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity, Data Integrity, Cyber Resilience, and Risk to IT business functions.• Designed and embedded SOC2 control standards with the aim to achieve SOC2 compliance by 2022. Guided technical teams in the achieving of these standards and supported internal audit in ensuring resilience levels were established and maintained.

Nottingham, United Kingdom

I spearheaded day-to-day business operations, such as developing a resilience strategy and business continuity framework to reflect changes to the environment and business operations with a keen focus on accomplishing business designated goals. I identified opportunities to improve recovery solutions and arrangements, while ensuring that business requirements are mapped to disaster recovery solutions. I recognised crisis management response procedures, while maintaining appropriate continuity processes, systems, and guidance documentation. I oversaw critical business portfolios to assure annual testing of High Business Criticality Applications. Reviewed post-test reports meeting resilience targets within strict timelines. I ensured all services are failed over, tested, and failed back throughout the exercise while serving as a Resilience lead for Major Data Centre network isolation tests. I also acted as a Subject Matter Expert in delivering the key programme to test Backup, Recovery, and Restore processes for priority applications.Key Accomplishments:• Commanded by higher-level management as a Resiliency Manager for providing assurance and governance advice on Service Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Cyber Resilience, and Risk to IT business functions.• Developed and implemented technical standards based on the consensus of different parties by standardising Data and Application Validation guidance for Recovery and Restore testing.• Delivered exceptional guidance to review the development of DR Monthly Reporting and devised effective endorsements that ultimately improved KPIs.

St. Breward, Bodmin, Cornwall

Finding that Resilience is often misunderstood and underrepresented in the South West region I launched Beacon Resilience as a consultancy firm offering SME companies advise on all areas of resilience. Covering IT Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity, Operational Resilience and Cyber Resilience.As part of my relocation to Derbyshire to take up permanent employment I had to take the difficult decision and close the business.

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

I was brought in as the Programme Disaster Recovery Change Manager for a key Royal London programme of works which was delivering the replacement solution for the existing Pension service consisting of over 20 individual platforms. I collaborated closely with the Disaster Recovery Architect and Technical Architects and Product Owners to determine the most cost effective and reliable mechanism to ensure the Pension services were not only resilient but highly available to ensure that the business could meet the customers needs. Key Accomplishments:• Responsible for ensuring that all new services were fully resilient and tested under a full Data Centre loss scenario prior to Go-Live release. • Provided support to the Project Manager as her SME for all areas of Operational and Cyber Resilience.• Worked closely with the BAU BC&DR team to review and advice on their DR framework and policies as part of an improvement programme.

Cornwall, United Kingdom

I created technical disaster recovery plans to protect business data, as well as their hardware and software. I collaborated with the technology department of the organization to develop programs and utilise resources for technical recovery. I carried out reviews on recovery documentation to ensure technical accuracy and compliance to Resilience standards and policies. I handled IBM Resiliency Services division to provide disaster recovery monitoring, reporting, testing, and workflow automation capabilities of complex hybrid environments in a scalable, easier-to-use solution built on industry standards.Key Accomplishments:• Ensured all recovery steps by identifying and documenting Schedule of Events (SoE) based on the number of planned and unplanned scenarios through end-to-end execution of Reviewed Technical Recovery Plans.• Built Test Briefing Packs before each test that assured accurate and timely communication to all Technical SMEs and IBM/Lloyds Management.• Played a vital role in the Project Delivery team for creating DR Test scripts (SoE) for Hybrid Cloud infrastructure components.

Knutsford

I recovered key business services from significant unplanned disruption, protecting its customers, shareholders, and ultimately the integrity of the financial system by providing business services in the face of adverse operational events through anticipation, prevention, recovering from, and adaption. I directed a team of five members to attain target goals through strategic planning and execution of a 3-year road map. I monitored resilience risks across the Technology Hosting tower as well as resilience budget across multiple teams. I delivered Barclays Internal Control Enhancement Programme, while handling team workloads and regular 1-2-1 sessions and team meetings.Key Accomplishments:• Led Hosting Service Delivery Resilience team to cover for a long-term sickness, while ensuring hosting resilience process adherence having to report delinquencies and non-compliance to the resilience process owner.

Knutsford

I acted as a Resilience Specialist while working on the Barclays Group wide Internal Control Enhancement Programme (BICEP). I performed an integral role in delivering expert guidance, training, and coaching to the Hosting Service Delivery teams in understanding the Group Resilience Policy and Standards, standards compliance, and tracking of any non-compliance through to remediation. I enhanced the resilience of their applications that deployed on the websites of the Hosting Service Infrastructure Departments by assisting to all Business Unit Resilience Partners. Key Accomplishments:• Strictly adhered to the new Group Resilience Policy and Standards while Implementing people, process, and technology resilience strategy across the Hosting Service Delivery teams.• Introduced the testing approach for Resilience Category 0 and 1 system and presented ‘Best Practice’ options for approval to implement them by cooperating with the Technology Resilience Council.

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

I implemented technologies that enabled the Bank to respond to and recover from events responsively and adaptively. I collaborated with team members and clients on unique strategies that enabled the organization to withstand different internal and external risks. I educated colleagues on a variety of resilience disciplines including business continuity, crisis management, technical disaster recovery, risk management, and emergency response. I planned and organised 50+ Disaster Recovery exercises on a wide variety of critical Tier 1 and 2 services and financial products, including serving as an Event Manager for 300+ on & off-host services/applications for the Banks mainframe exercises. I delivered various key projects, such as building scope of DR tests in close cooperation with senior stakeholders, writing schedule of events for failover and failback of services as the implementation project manager. I provided technical design assurance regarding IT resilience and service continuity on 100+ new projects and changes and advised correct process and procedure to ensure successful delivery DR tests before launch.Key Accomplishments:• Identified unique risks that could cause extended business disruption by designing operating models and techniques that maximised the adoption of risk and resilience methods.• Improved infrastructure deployments that exploited resilience and met recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTO/RPO) through effective guidance to Project Managers.• Extended banks accredited authoriser status for reviewing and approving categories 1, 2, and 3 changes initially by utilising INFOMAN and then followed by ServiceNow.

Altrincham, Manchester

Manchester, United Kingdom