Click on our new whiteboard video to see if your company is prepared to face unexpected risk, threats and crisis.

Are you ready to deal with the unexpected? The top five risks for businesses in terms of likelihood in 2018 were: (1) extreme weather events, (2) natural disasters, (3) cyberattacks, (4) data fraud or theft, and (5) failure of climate change mitigation. That’s a wide variety of risks, which makes it challenging to see the “big risk picture.”

Regardless, it is a fundamental and continuing responsibility of leaders, managers, and executives to plan for and deal with the unexpected. This is particularly true for the kinds of scenarios that, even if unlikely, could have severe impacts upon sustained business operations and enterprise survivability. Here are some reasons why:

  • In 2018, Marriott, the world’s largest hotel company, acknowledged that 25 million passport numbers had been stolen—5 million of them unencrypted—in a massive data breach. There was also the 2017 breach at Equifax, the largest credit bureau in America, which suffered a breach that exposed the social security numbers and other personal data of 145 million people.
  • Ransomware rose from the 22nd most common malware in 2014 to the 5th common malware in 2017, according to a Verizon Data Breach analysis.
  • The most costly season for American businesses to date was the 2017 hurricane season along the Atlantic coast when 17 storms raged in one year.

Recent natural disasters, cyber-attacks, corporate and employee integrity issues and active shooter events are driving home to both government and businesses the criticality of advance preparation for crisis. Threats are evolving, and leaders are expected to demonstrate a commitment to crisis planning as seen in demands for accountability, resiliency, and commitment to employees, customers, stakeholders and taxpayers. Although we all hope a crisis will not happen in our organization, active planning for such events is a necessary and responsible approach in today’s unpredictable world.

What If…

  • …there was a business continuity and continuity of operations planning approach that wasn’t too expensive to develop in terms of time or money?
  • …that approach leveraged resources you already possess to reduce costs and accelerate planning?
  • …the approach was tailored to your organization, easy to maintain and not static?
  • …the approach improved your response and resiliency from the first day?

Watermark can help. Asset identification; threat, vulnerability and risk assessments; strategic planning; security system specification and security force design; business continuity and business resilience; crisis response—we cover the enterprise. We have decades of security, risk and business analysis, planning, and program support. We are the team that leaders in private, public and government sectors call on to identify the existential threats and risks faced by their organization, and to define and implement a response plan for their next “unthinkable” crisis.

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