risk mitigation Continuity Compliance

Board Risk Oversight / Business Continuity / Banks Return to Financial Products Linked to 2008 Credit Bubble

April 4, 2013 By Ben Carnevale Leave a Comment

By: Ben J. Carnevale Is the passage of time erasing our memories of the risk management failures committed by so many of our major economic institutions during the 2008-2009 financial crises? A recent article posted in Business Week entitled “Behold the Ghosts of Bubbles Past” would certainly seem to indicate that to be the case. This article listed several events which would seem to imply that business continuity planners perhaps needed to quickly re-evaluate their business impact assumptions and even consider re-writing many of their disaster preparedness strategies related to … [Read more...]

Cyber Security Risk: Can Cyber Insurance Cover Your Bets?

November 14, 2012 By Ben Carnevale Leave a Comment

By: Ben J. Carnevale, Editor One of the more common areas of interest suggested by many of the readers of this website involves the concern of cyber security related risks and the availability (or lack thereof) of cyber insurance options to address this rising risk mitigation topic. Without thinking too long about this major risk management topic, it can certainly be said that data breaches have increased dramatically within the past few years, giving way to new trends within almost every industry sector of business in the U.S. In addition -- and along with their unpredictable nature … [Read more...]

Seismologists Convicted and Jailed for Incorrect Prediction

October 24, 2012 By Ben Carnevale Leave a Comment

Photo courtesy of scientificamerican.com

For those readers following the recent Italian regional court decision where six Italian scientists and an ex-government official have been sentenced to six years in prison over the 2009 deadly earthquake in L'Aquila, it would be no surprise that the head of Italy's disaster body, Luciano Maiani, has resigned today in protest of such a decision. “This is the end of scientists giving consultations to the state,” warned Prof Maiani, a world-renowned physicist who was director general of the Cern nuclear research center in Switzerland from 1999-2003. Given the many obvious and … [Read more...]

How to Ensure Supplier and Supply Chain Management Delivers Value-Added Mutual Benefits

September 18, 2012 By Ben Carnevale Leave a Comment

Photo courtesy of section508ccompliantpdfs.com

All too often, many organizations are facing risk management issues that seem to exist somewhat beyond their direct control. An organization’s supply chain and the management of those supplier relationship dynamics are often the best examples of areas of risk mitigation where companies appear to be totally at the mercy of others. If your disaster preparedness, business continuity planning, private sector risk or risk management (PS-Prep) team members are talking about issues like this …then, you should consider asking them to attend a LIVE webcast with Jonathan Hughes, who will … [Read more...]

BYOD — A Future Game-Changer ?

June 28, 2012 By Ben Carnevale Leave a Comment

Judging from several comments recently received from our readers asking for information about the current BYOD trend, and given the fact that there seems to be little doubt that individuals are increasingly tapping into consumer devices (i.e. smartphones, iPads, tablet computers, etc.) and services to support their business roles and boost productivity in unexpected ways ---a strong argument can be made that this BYOD trend could be a game-changer in the future for all companies to ignore at their own peril. According to the Financial Times, the size of the smartphone market has surpassed … [Read more...]

Free Webinar Supports How Good Policies and Procedure Form Foundation of Strong Compliance Programs

May 21, 2012 By Ben Carnevale Leave a Comment

Risk mitigation is a major challenge and, at the same time, an opportunity for risk management and business continuity planning activities. When it comes to events such as the HHS’ formal HIPAA Audit Program, as mandated by the HITECH Act, it is becoming more and more clear that an auditor’s first impressions and subsequent on-site visits, reviews and audits will be impacted by the content of the audited organization’s Policies and Procedures. How good are your organization’s policies and procedures? Policies set the stage and serve as an organization’s foundation and … [Read more...]

National Severe Weather Preparedness Week – April 22-28 2012

April 22, 2012 By Ben Carnevale Leave a Comment

As the nation marks the first anniversary of one of the largest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are teaming up by naming the week of 22-28 April 2012 “National Severe Weather Preparedness Week.” NOAA and FEMA encourage the public nationally to "know your risk, take action, and be a force of nature" by taking proactive preparedness measures and inspiring others to do the same. While the type and severity of threats vary across FEMA's 10 Regions, the need to be prepared is … [Read more...]

ENISA “Procure Secure” Report Offers Guidance on Cloud Service Provider Decisions

April 5, 2012 By Ben Carnevale Leave a Comment

The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) has recently released a new guidance report entitled “Procure Secure: A Guide to Monitoring of Security Service Levels in Cloud Contracts” which should be a valuable reading resource for all information and/or network security and risk management team members. Marnix Dekker, who co-authored the report states, "Organizations have started switching from running systems internally to outsourcing and using cloud services. So the skills and focus of IT staff have to change." This guidance document is full of valuable information … [Read more...]

Business Continuity Benefits List Created by Results of a Recent Survey

April 5, 2012 By Ben Carnevale Leave a Comment

Business continuity planning teams must always be ready to offer upper management a list of the benefits to the company gained from by having a current, tested and continually improving business continuity/disaster recovery plan. As a result, our staff receives inquiries for assistance in organizing a list of benefits received from having a BC plan, and expressed in language meaningful to upper management. To fulfill that request our staff offers the results of a recent survey conducted by Continuity Central in the U.K. and recommends that this summary report of findings be added to the … [Read more...]

Cyber Security — 2012 List of Tools to Create and Support Secure IT Environments

March 15, 2012 By Ben Carnevale Leave a Comment

Recently our staff has been receiving requests for more information regarding defense strategies, cybersecurity monitoring tools, and just general direction as to where to go to direct in-house CIO and information security professionals so that they can validate and continually update and improve their risk mitigation strategies regarding cyber security related incidents, threats and events. In response, our staff would like to direct you to a recent article posted on the CWZ website. This posted cyber security tools list for 2012 provides some unique elements, such as; Rather than … [Read more...]