Author Archives: Jared Wade

About Jared Wade

Jared Wade is a freelance writer and former editor of the Risk Management Monitor and senior editor of Risk Management magazine. You can find more of his writing at JaredWade.com.
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Minnesota Leads Nation in Touchdowns

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No, despite the their shocking comeback to beat the Arizona Cardinals yesterday, we’re not talking about touchdowns scored by the still-struggling Minnesota Vikings. Unfortunately for those in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, battered — both physically and emotionally — QB Brett Favre has only found the endzone nine times this season.

But Minnesota did surprisingly lead all states in 2010 in terms of tornado touchdowns — mostly due to an insane amount of twister activity on June 17, which saw an unprecedented 48 tornadoes, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

It leads all others in the number of tornadoes that have swept through the state this year.

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The National Weather Service says 104 tornadoes touched down in Minnesota in 2010, shattering the old record of 74 in 2001.

The state usually doesn’t find itself at the top of the list.

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Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas typically have the most.

Obviously, tornado preparedness and relief are a very serious matter.

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Our sincere condolences go out to all of the families and communities affected by the loss of life and property due to these pernicious windstorms throughout the year.

tornado

How Risk Oversight Fails

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failure

For the past few years, Congress, the SEC, rating agencies and even the venerable Risk Management magazine have all been harping on the need for organizations to improve their risk oversight. But as any risk professional worth his or her salt should know, all risk oversight is not good risk oversight.

It’s a very simple, logical fact — but one that is all too often overlooked.

No organization would think that just having management means it has good management. Few would think having an IT department means they inherently have optimal technology. For some reason, however, that is the way many think about risk oversight. We have it — it must be working.

Wrong.

Luckily, Boardmember.com has put together a good list of “Ten Ways Risk Oversight Can Fail” to help illustrate the difference.

Not understanding strategic risk management — the next “wave of the future” and something I wrote about in September — is one key way companies fail.

(2) Lack of understanding of, or a failure to monitor, the significant assumptions underlying the strategy – Boards should understand the critical factors that make or break the successful execution of the strategy and ensure a process is in place to monitor business or regulatory changes that could impact those factors.

Charting emerging risks, not surprisingly, were another obvious inclusion.

(4) Failure to identify and manage emerging risks – The board must satisfy itself that management brings to bear the appropriate expertise, processes and information to identify new and complex risks to the execution of the enterprise’s strategy and business model and to manage those risks effectively.

The list also featured a nice summation of what too many organizations consider an actual enterprise risk management program.

(6) The company practices “enterprise list management” – Generating lists of risks over time with no follow-up to understand and close gaps in risk management capabilities is not good practice. Risk management should impact the core management activities that matter – strategy-setting, business planning and performance management.

And, of course, the board — often a laggard on understanding the true risks of the company — can provide a critical point of risk oversight failure.

(10) The board isn’t organized effectively for risk oversight – The board may not be allocating sufficient time and resources to risk oversight. Or the board isn’t availing itself of the appropriate company officers to focus on identifying areas in which management needs to improve the organization’s capabilities and information for managing risk. Or there is insufficient coverage by the board of the enterprise’s risks.

Click through to the full article for the other six ways risks oversight can fail.

How Much Airport Security Is Too Much?

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Martin Broughton, the chairman of British Airways, has had it up to here with the horse-and-pony show of airport security requirements required for all European flights headed to the United States.

“America does not do internally a lot of the things they demand that we do,” Broughton said in comments quoted by the Financial Times and confirmed by British Airways.

“We shouldn’t stand for that. We should say, ‘We’ll only do things which we consider to be essential and that you Americans also consider essential.'”

Specifically, he was referring to shoe and laptop removal requirements — “redundant” practices he had a few other choice phrases for.

Chairman Martin Broughton accused the U.S. of demanding “completely redundant” security checks at airports, such as removing shoes and separate examinations of laptop computers.
Europe should not have to “kowtow to the Americans every time they want something done” to beef up security on U.S.-bound flights, Broughton said.

Chairman Martin Broughton accused the U.S. of demanding “completely redundant” security checks at airports, such as removing shoes and separate examinations of laptop computers.

Europe should not have to “kowtow to the Americans every time they want something done” to beef up security on U.S.-bound flights, Broughton said.

He won support Wednesday from the owner of Heathrow airport and the British pilots’ union as well as several European airlines and security experts on both sides of the Atlantic.

It isn’t just European pilots who are on his side. Many of the major carriers across the pond gave their seals of approval to Broughton’s frustration.

security experts and several European airlines, including Virgin Atlantic, Iberia and Finnair, welcomed Broughton’s comments, saying it was time to reevaluate the many layers of time-consuming airport security.

“We need to keep passengers safe, but there’s also a whole bunch of security rules that could be eased out,” said Chris Yates, an aviation security analyst in London.

The requirement to remove shoes for screening, for example, was “the knee-jerk reaction after Richard Reid.” The newest metal detectors would sense any metal such as wiring in shoes, he contended.

Many of the security rules are in place because of history rather than real risk, agreed Todd Curtis, a Seattle-based security expert at airsafe.com.

As with all risk management decisions — and, at its core, that’s what all security comes down to — Curtis’ point is the issue at hand: how do you ensure that commercial airlines can be as safe as possible but at the same time not impose onerous safeguards that impair their ability to succeed as commercial ventures?

The safest way to make sure no planes explode would be to ban air travel. No planes would ever be hijacked again. Also, oh yeah, no one would ever make another dime in the airline industry and we would all be doing a lot more driving.

The other extreme would be to have no security at all. There would be no lines to wait in before you board. No privacy-invading x-ray screening. The whole process of flying would be streamlined and the airport would become an ideal environment to make money from consumers. But then planes would likely be dropping out of the sky every few weeks.

There needs to be a balance.

And with a sensitive, hot-button issue like airport security — which is essentially the lynchpin of America’s “domestic war on terror” — the pendulum between safety and convenience will likely always sway along with the news. The more terrorist plots we see, particularly if ever there is another, major successful event, the more security we will likely see. The fewer events we hear about, the more complacency will set in and the more people will covet convenience.

Apparently some European heads of industry think the pendulum has swung too far in direction of safety — or more accurately, they think the “for-show” protocols that were once mere annoyances have turned into business-harming problems that need to be fixed.

Time can do that.

In related news, a humorous new website called Fun With TSA that I bet Broughton would enjoy is poking fun at some proposed, in-flight TSA safety restrictions. Apparently the aviation watchdog has suggested that it may be wise to not allow passengers to “leave your seat during the last hour of your flight, use electronic devices, or have anything at all on your lap.”

And while that would indeed be very annoying, here are two of their suggestions on fun ways you can pass the time during the last hour. There are eight other ideas if you click through to the Fun With TSA site.

marco_polo-500x375

Be the person on your flight to suddenly shout out “Marco!” during that last hour when others are looking for things to do.  It might take a few tries, but eventually someone somewhere on the plane will respond with a “Polo!” if for no other reason than to shut you up.  Entertainment achieved.

light_wave

This can be every bit as much fun as when people do “the wave” at a stadium, only there will be no standing up here for obvious reasons.  Instead, simply power on your overhead light, wait for the people in front of you to power on theirs, then turn yours off.  A truly beautiful spectacle once it gets going.

Cyberattacks, Terrorism Are Top Threats for UK

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According to the United Kingdom’s recently unveiled national security strategy, cyberattacks and terrorism present the gravest threats to the country. Overall, the report identifies 15 “priority risks” — four of which are considered “tier 1” threats.

Tier One:
• International terrorism affecting the UK or its interests, including a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack by terrorists; and/or a significant increase in the levels of terrorism relating to Northern Ireland.
• Hostile attacks upon UK cyber space by other states and large scale cyber crime.
• A major accident or natural hazard which requires a national response, such as severe coastal
flooding affecting three or more regions of the UK, or an influenza pandemic.
• An international military crisis between states, drawing in the UK, and its allies as well as other states and non-state actors.

Here are the top risks:

• International terrorism affecting the UK or its interests, including a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack by terrorists; and/or a significant increase in the levels of terrorism relating to Northern Ireland.

• Hostile attacks upon UK cyber space by other states and large scale cyber crime.

• A major accident or natural hazard which requires a national response, such as severe coastal

flooding affecting three or more regions of the UK, or an influenza pandemic.

• An international military crisis between states, drawing in the UK, and its allies as well as other states and non-state actors.

Obviously, these are all very difficult perils to protect citizens, infrastructure and the economy against. And unfortunately, these emerging threats are growing at a time when Britain is least prepared to confront them given the national priority now assigned to “austerity measures” designed the cut spending.

The defense budget, for instance, is set to be trimmed by 8% over the next four years, leaving one Member of Parliament wondering how the country can revamp its strategy to keep citizens safe.

Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin, who is chairman of the Commons Public Administration Committee, said it was difficult to see how an effective National Security Strategy could be developed against the backdrop of cuts.

“We seem to be operating under the imperative of deficit reduction,” he said. “But, there’s very little in what’s being done now that reflects deep and sustained analysis about what sort of country we want to be in 10 or 20 years time.”

The Obama administration has also been highly critical of Prime Minister David Cameron’s defense spending cuts. Even the national security strategy itself admits that the country has a “security structure that is woefully unsuitable” for the modern threats it faces — a failing that is squarely blamed on the previous ruling officials.

The last Government took little account of this fact. Twelve years elapsed while the world changed almost beyond recognition. Abroad, our forces were sent into action without the equipment they needed, and on the basis of lamentable planning, and in more simultaneous conflicts than the Defence Review in 1998 had planned for.

At home, the machinery of Government failed to adapt to the new circumstances – lacking both the urgency and the integration needed to cope with the new situation.As a Government, we have inherited a defence and security structure that is woefully unsuitable for the world we live in today. We are determined to learn from those mistakes, and make the changes needed.

In an age of uncertainty, we need to be able to act quickly and effectively to address new and evolving threats to our security. That means having access to the best possible advice, and crucially, the right people around the table when decisions are made. It means considering national security issues in the round, recognising that when it comes to national security, foreign and domestic policy are not separate issues, but two halves of one picture.

To address this concern — at least somewhat — the government announced that it will provide an extra £500 million for cybersecurity that will be “focused on protecting key infrastructure and defence assets.”

We will see if that is enough to do the job — which also includes the below security challenges that the government has identified as “tier two” and “tier three” risks.

Tier Two Risks:

• An attack on the UK or its Oversees Territories by another state or proxy using chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) weapons.

• Risk of major instability, insurgency or civil war overseas which creates an environment that terrorists can exploit to threaten the UK.

• A significant increase in the level of organised crime affecting the UK.

• Severe disruption to information received, transmitted or collected by satellites, possibly as the result of a deliberate attack by another state.

Tier Three Risks:

• A large scale conventional military attack on the UK by another state (not involving the use of CBRN weapons) resulting in fatalities and damage to infrastructure within the UK.

• A significant increase in the level of terrorists, organised criminals, illegal immigrants and illicit goods trying to cross the UK border to enter the UK.

• Disruption to oil or gas supplies to the UK, or price instability, as a result of war, accident, major political upheaval or deliberate manipulation of supply by producers.

• A major release of radioactive material from a civil nuclear site within the UK which affects one or more regions.

• A conventional attack by a state on another NATO or EU member to which the UK would have to respond.

• An attack on a UK overseas territory as the result of a sovereignty dispute or a wider regional conflict.

• Short to medium term disruption to international supplies of resources (e.g. food, minerals) essential to the UK.