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How to Make the Most Out of 2021’s Virtual Conferences for Rising Risk Professionals and Employers

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Amid a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the world are going back into lockdowns or rolling back phased reopenings, and it appears remote work arrangements and virtual events will continue to be the norm for many. Throughout the pandemic and now, moving into 2021, these shifts have prompted serious consideration about what it means to connect at work and how to build and maintain relationships in your professional network without seeing people in person.

As the job market remains in flux from the pandemic, this is a particularly pressing concern for students, early-career professionals, and others who are just establishing themselves in the risk profession. To that end, insurance and risk management student organization Gamma Iota Sigma has composed virtual conference guides for both students and employers to make the most out of the growing number of virtual recruitment and networking events.

According to Grace Grant, the organization’s executive director of chapter operations, Gamma Iota Sigma created the Virtual Conference Guide after roundtable discussions with a range of industry and professional association partners regarding student engagement, recruitment and collaboration amid the pandemic. “Throughout the course of the summer, nearly 30 different groups participated in these discussions where we discussed lessons learned and opportunities we were facing in light of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Grant said. “Because many of our partner organizations also host annual conferences, and everyone was pivoting to a virtual option, it became apparent that both students and employers would benefit from a best practices guide for virtual conference attendance.”

“For an industry that is largely centered around business relationships, the pivot to virtual a conference season presents a challenge, but also opportunities,” said Alyssa Bouchard, vice president of industry engagement at Gamma Iota Sigma. “While virtual engagement can’t always take the place of face-to-face engagement, it does allow for increased access. Virtual conferences have lower registration fees in many cases.


They have no associated travel costs or commitments. For some, the lack of business travel or daily commutes in our virtual environment means more time in the day. Collectively, this creates a big opportunity for rising risk professionals to pursue career development opportunities which might not have previously been an option but are now right in front of them—literally. It is a great time for rising risk professionals to participate in industry conferences and events to expand their industry knowledge and networks.”

For rising risk professionals looking to seize those expanded opportunities via virtual conferences and events, click here for the Virtual Conference Guide for Students.

On the day of the event, some of the key tips for students include:

  • Prepare your space. Find a quiet and comfortable space for attending the conference. Make sure you have all necessary technology and information within reach. Set up a neutral and professional background. Be aware of personal items that may show in your screen. Make sure your space is well-illuminated so conference attendees can clearly see your face during video interactions. Have water and a snack nearby so you can refuel when needed!
  • Check your Wi-Fi bandwidth. If possible, sit close to the router. Turn Wifi “off” on unused devices to free up bandwidth. If needed, ask your housemates to refrain from streaming during the event.
  • Dress to impress. Wear head-to-toe professional attire that is reflective of your professional brand and leaves conference attendees with a good impression. Some conference hosts will specify a recommended dress code for the event. If not, wear business professional attire.
  • Minimize distractions.
    • Close other tabs on your computer. Turn off notifications on your phone and other devices so you can focus on the conference.
    • Notify members of your household that you are participating in a virtual conference to better manage potential disruptions.
  • Build your network. Many virtual conferences will host virtual networking lounges, interest groups, chat rooms or other opportunities to meet attendees. Leverage these opportunities!
    • Virtual conferences offer a variety of communication methods to connect with other attendees. If you have meetings scheduled, confirm whether they are text, audio, or video meetings before joining the meeting.
    • Don’t be afraid to reach out and introduce yourself to other conference attendees. Share your elevator pitch when joining new conversations.
    • Be aware of your audience and know whether the chat is one-on-one or a group conversation.
    • If you plan to reconnect after the event, establish the best way to do so before signing off.
  • Keep a list of action items. How will you use the information you’ve acquired at the conference? Keep a list of to-do items for after the event. For example, 1) Submit online application for internship at ABC Insurance Company, 2) Follow up with Sheryl on offer to job shadow, 3) Review XYZ Brokerage’s career brochure, 4) Conduct additional research on product recall insurance.

For companies looking to recruit the next generation of risk professionals, click here for the Virtual Conference Guide for Employers.

For example, on the day of the event, GIS advised employers to:

  • Be proactive. Don’t wait for students and candidates to come to you! Find ways to actively engage conference attendee in the virtual lobby, lounges, and sessions. If a candidate visits your booth, give them a warm welcome.
  • Facilitate informal networking opportunities. Encourage attendees from your company to hang out in the virtual networking lounge, interest groups, or chat rooms when they’re not scheduled to be somewhere else. This will allow them to engage with students and/or potential candidates in a less formal setting.
  • Identify next steps. If speaking with a booth visitor or interviewee, clarify action items following the conference. Do they need to complete a job application? When will they hear back from you about a second-round interview?

    How can they find more information about your organization and/or opportunities?

After COVID, Cyberrisks Top Agenda for Risk Professionals in India, Marsh and RIMS Report

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For risk professionals in India, the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the critical need to build business resilience and develop mature yet flexible business continuity plans to address both short- and long-term threats. In the new Marsh and RIMS report Excellence in Risk Management India 2020, Spotlight on Resilience: Risk Management During COVID-19, 63% of risk professionals in India said a new pandemic or continued fallout from COVID-19 was a top risk facing their organization, followed by cyberattacks (56%), data fraud or theft (36%), failure of critical infrastructure (33%), fiscal crises (31%), and extreme weather events (25%).

This mix of top risks illustrates the critical task before risk professionals heading into 2021: ensuring capability and procedures to respond to fast-emerging disasters, while not losing sight of the critical work to boost baseline resilience against foreseeable risks across the enterprise.

“Organizations need to balance their focus between longstanding and emerging risks,” said Sanjay Kedia, country head and CEO of Marsh India. “While there has long been an awareness of weather-related risks, low-frequency risks generally receive less attention. The pandemic has underlined the need for risk managers to keep all perils on their radar.”

Indeed, Marsh and RIMS found risk assessment and modeling are critical gaps for India-based risk professionals to focus on to mature their risk management programs. “As businesses recover from COVID-19, many senior leaders are shifting attention to questions of resilience.

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But, as our survey shows, the use of advanced risk management techniques in India remains limited—for example, more than one-fifth of respondents do not assess or model emerging risks,” the report noted.

This is particularly the case with emerging cyberrisks. Cyberattacks and data loss or theft ranked among the top three threats, and the pandemic escalated the already rising number of cyberthreats to companies in India with the shift to remote work, online business, and ransomware attacks. Indeed, the report noted that the pandemic led to a surge in cyberattacks against Indian companies, with New Delhi among the top 10 most often attacked cities with regard to ransomware in 2020, and more than a third of Indian respondents to a June survey by Microsoft reporting they had fallen prey to a pandemic-related phishing email. Yet only a third of respondents to the Marsh/RIMS report said they model potential cyber loss scenarios, and only 26% plan to do so in the next year. Key cyberrisk management measures and the rate of implementation among Indian companies include:

Whether it is phishing attacks on employees or internet outages interrupting operations in the supply chain, the report notes that the next major event for Indian companies could well be a cyberattack. Focusing on building cyber resilience was one of the report’s four key recommendations, noting “organizations should shift their focus from solely trying to prevent an attack to accepting the inevitability of a cyber event and taking action to mitigate its effect.”

The report’s other top recommendations for risk professionals in India were:

  • Regularly review existing business continuity plans – “Companies should carefully review and refine their business continuity plans. They should ensure their plans enable them to respond effectively to threats that bring short-term pain and long-term and widespread challenges, as is the case with COVID-19.”
  • Embrace the changing working environment – “Lockdowns intended to stem the spread of COVID-19 required many companies to quickly move to remote working, change their business models, and implement new safety measures upon return to the workplace. Other perils, like a natural disaster, could necessitate and precipitate such shifts, even if shorter in duration. Businesses should invest in structures that allow employees to work remotely effectively, efficiently, and safely and should educate employees on new ways of working under changing circumstances.”
  • Remap and remodel your supply chain – “The COVID-19 pandemic emphasizes the need to re-examine supply chains regularly, with special focus on understanding the resilience and reliance of vendors. Companies would benefit from understanding their vendors’ ecosystems; both to provide a clearer view of how they could be affected by different risks and to review contracts to better understand liabilities.
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Moving forward, there is considerable room for risk professionals to be more involved in scenario analysis and strategy

In December, RIMS introduced additional resources specifically for risk professionals in India looking to elevate their risk practice. The report was released around the recent RIMS Virtual Risk Forum India 2020, which brought together hundreds of risk and insurance professionals from across India and around the world. Soon thereafter, the risk management society also announced the official formation of a RIMS India Chapter.

“The exchange of knowledge and experience drives the risk management profession, allowing practitioners to more effectively enhance corporate decision-making, strengthen resiliency and leverage new and exciting opportunities for their organizations,” said Roop Kumar, chief of risk at SBI Life and inaugural president of the India chapter’s board of directors. “RIMS India Chapter will quickly become an exceptional resource for all business leaders. We look forward to delivering cutting-edge risk management insight to support our members as they advance their programs and their careers.”

Other members of the inaugural board of the India chapter include: Keerthana Mainkar, head ERM at Infosys; Amol Padhye, head of market risk at HDFC Bank; Amber Gupta, head legal and corporate secretary at Birla Sunlife Insurance; Anand Shirur, CEO of Digitangle Consulting PVT, Ltd; Steward Doss, associate professor at National Insurance Academy; Monika Mittal, professor at BIMTECH; Shibyanshu Sharma, vice president of risk management at SBI Life; and Yogesh Ghorpade, head of ERM and insurance lead at Thermax Industries.

“RIMS India’s Board of Directors truly represent a cross-section of the country’s risk management community,” said Gopal Krishnan K S, head of RIMS India Operations. “The Society looks forward to learning from their unique experiences and welcoming others to contribute so that, together, we can develop the highest standard of risk management education to address corporate India’s biggest concerns.

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Applying the Pareto Principle for Personal and Professional Success

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Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist born in 1848, was apparently also a keen gardener, and like all keen gardeners, Vilfredo knew not all plants are created equal. Some of them produced a great crop of abundance, and some of them had very little to offer. In fact, legend has it that Vilfredo noticed that 20% of his pea plants were producing 80% of the healthy pea produce. 

This realization set Vilfredo on a voyage of discovery of other uneven distributions in life, particularly in relation to wealth. His discovery that 80% of the wealth in Italy was owned by 20% of the population was later found to be broadly true across many cities, countries and other geographic areas. This uneven 80/20 distribution formed the basis of what we today call the “Pareto Principle” or the “80/20 rule,” in recognition of the more general imbalance of inputs and outputs in many aspects of life. 

For example, it has been found that:

  • 20% of employees are responsible for 80% of results
  • 20% of customers account for 80% of profits
  • 20% of content in content marketing produces 80% of traffic
  • 80% of pollution originates from 20% of all factories

These rules are not set in stone and the ratio often will not be exactly 80/20, but this uneven distribution of the “vital few and trivial many” is found in many aspects of life and business.

So, why does this matter, and what are the practical implications for you as a risk manager and an individual managing your own personal life?

Risk Management Applications

Risk management often involves examining a seemingly never-ending list of things that can go wrong and may result in negative consequences. There are many different drivers that can increase either the likelihood or severity of a risk event and risk professionals are tasked with trying to prioritize the risks and focus on the key drivers.

The Pareto Principle can help to clarify prioritization in risk management. For example, the 80/20 rule has been evidenced within occupational health and safety, with 20% of hazards shown to account for 80% of injuries. Other cited examples include 80% of computer system crashes coming from 20% of reported bugs, and 20% of drivers causing 80% of accidents.

The 80/20 rule serves as an important reminder that not all risk drivers are equal and that a key aspect of risk management is the ability to truly understand the drivers behind risks so that we can focus our attention on those that matter most.

Personal Implications 

Perhaps one of the most profound personal takeaways from the Pareto Principle is the application to personal time management. We all know that some people manage to achieve extraordinary success in life, despite the fact that we are all constrained by the same 24 hours in each day. Arguably, many of the most successful business people are masters of prioritization and applying the 80/20 rule to their own personal time management. They recognize that not all tasks are created equal and, hence, they will carefully think about which tasks are their top 20% that will result in an 80% output. Then they get to work doing these tasks and delete, delegate or defer the other 80%. So the next time you have a list of 10 things on your to-do list, make sure to carefully choose the top two and get to work on them.

Only 18% of IT Pros Confident in Current Password Risk Management

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Many are having trouble maintaining the security of their employees’ log-in information, resulting in serious risks to their networks and private information. According to a recent LastPass and VansonBourne survey of 750 IT and security professionals in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia and Singapore, only 18% feel their company’s current access security is “fully secure and does not require improvement.” Risk management professionals have a significant role to play in determining how their organizations handle these risks and protect their data.

Some of the biggest ways that employees’ poor password management creates potential security threats to organizations’ data, according to the security professionals surveyed, are password reuse (according to 67%), weak passwords (65%), and not changing default passwords (36%), according to the security professionals surveyed. Nearly all respondents (95%) said that the risks that come along with using passwords create threats to the organization.

Given the importance of strong login information, companies often attempt to implement password rules to reduce security risks, such as requiring employees to choose complex passwords and change them frequently. However, these issues can lead to frustrations for both IT staff and employees. According to the LastPass/VansonBourne survey, the top frustrations for IT are employees reusing passwords for multiple applications, forgetting their passwords, and the time it takes to manage the company’s passwords. Employees are frustrated by having to regularly change their passwords, remember multiple passwords, and type long and complicated passwords.

The rapid increase in the number of employees working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic has also exacerbated the risks, given a corresponding surge in cyberattacks on remote workers since March. Many employees are now working on home networks that may not have the protections that office networks offer, their passwords may not follow the stringent guidelines their companies would normally require, and they may store their passwords in less secure ways. In fact, Entrust Datacard released a survey showing that 42% of employees working from home kept passwords by physically writing them down, while 34% saved them in their phones and 27% kept them on their computers. The survey also found that almost 20% of employees reused passwords across multiple systems, which could make it easier for malicious actors to compromise those systems.

Maintaining Secure Logins

There are ways for risk professionals to help protect their companies’ systems and data. Experts recommend mandatory cybersecurity training for all employees, including instructions on how to choose adequate passwords, how often to change them and how to avoid cyber threats like phishing and malware.

There are also technological ways that risk managers can help secure their organizations’ passwords. As a first step, the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) recommends that organizations ensure that employees’ passwords do not match those exposed in previous data breaches.

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There are publicly available services online that allow users to check whether email addresses and passwords have been compromised in breaches.

Additionally, the NIST recommends that employers restrict passwords to those that are not dictionary words, are not made up of repeated or sequential characters (such as 11111 or 12345 or qwerty), and do not contain specifics like the company’s name or the user’s name. NIST also suggests using multi-factor authentication (MFA), which would require employees to provide their login and password as well as a second piece of information, biometric data, or a physical device like a security key to verify their identity and log in.

With so many passwords to remember, a password manager—a program that stores and creates multiple complex passwords—may also be a good choice for organizations to protect their systems.

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Like all security precautions, password managers are not perfect. While still recommending their use, the Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that “using a password manager creates a single point of failure,” “password managers are an obvious target for adversaries” and “research suggests that many password managers have vulnerabilities.
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While a password manager or single sign-on technology can have benefits like faster authentication and letting employees remember fewer passwords, they also have downsides. The IT professionals surveyed by LastPass cited “the initial financial investment required to migrate to such solution,” “the regulations around the storage of the data required,” and “the initial time required to migrate to new types of methods” as the biggest challenges about using this technology. Additionally, 74% surveyed said that they thought employees at their companies would likely prefer to continue using passwords over passwordless methods because it was more familiar.