Biography
Mr. Lord is founder and CEO of Contingency Planning and Outsourcing, Inc. (CPO), which provides disaster recovery and business continuity planning tools and services to the public and private sector. Mr. Lord has almost 40 years in IT related positions with over 30 of those years involved in developing and maintaining plans for both IT and business for domestic and international organizations. In the early 1990s, Mr. Lord developed a disaster recovery planning methodology and supporting software system, CPOtracker, that has a patent pending status and is now the basis for the products and services offered by CPO. He obtained his CBCP, Certified Business Continuity Professional, designation in May of 1994 from the Disaster Recovery Institute International, DRII, and has remained current on CEUs each year since. In 1998, Mr. Lord was selected by Lockheed Martin to develop a disaster recovery plan for a major software system Lockheed had developed for the FBI. As a result, Mr. Lord was processed for a top secret clearance and worked at FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC and at the FBI data center in Clarksburg, WV. The resulting plan was also used in support of the FBIs preparation for Y2K. Mr. Lord is founder of the South Carolina chapter of CPAC (Contingency Planning Association of the Carolinas), and has served as its Chairman from 1999 thru 2006, He is currently Chairman for the 2007-08 term. Mr. Lord is an advisor to the board for the North Carolina chapter of CPAC and an advisor to the State of South Carolina representing the private sectors preparedness for the anticipated avian flu. He chaired the committee preparing the checklist guiding the private sector to being prepared for the pandemic. Having been involved in disaster recovery and business continuity planning since the early days of the industry, Mr. Lord is often called upon to speak to local and national organizations.