The Noggin Blog

Security operations centers offer some pretty clear business benefits: improved situational awareness and visibility, reduced long-term security costs, and less operational security siloing. But despite the manifold benefits, SOC adoption isn’t universal. Far from it: in fact, according to EY’s Global Information Security Survey, 2017-2018, just half (or so) of all surveyed organizations have an SOC. What’s going on with the rest?

When it comes to spending on compliance, companies aren’t shy. Every year, the average multinational will easily shell out millions on compliance, according to reporting in Harvard Business Review. In heavily-regulated sectors, that number is even higher. 

The ever-increasing threat level at major events puts even more pressure on organizers to ensure event security. To learn what some of the leading security professionals are doing to combat the growing threat, we recently attended the 3rd Venue Security & Safety Summit, which tackled key themes like planning and preparing for the unexpected, preventing and protecting against internal and external threats, designing and applying real-time response procedures, as well as building risk management into business continuity and disaster recovery.

Accident reports show that as many as 90 percent of industrial accidents are attributable to human error. But poor procedures and processes can make those human errors well-nigh inevitable, especially in the world of hazardous work. And that’s why teams involved in non-routine work need to implement stringent work controls to keep everyone safe and reduce risk.

Crisis can happen at any time, arising from a single devastating event or a series of unattended issues. Either way it comes about, crisis, once underway, presents a serious threat to a business’s core objectives, reputation – even its viability.

From profits to press to badly-need infrastructure projects, major events can bring any number of lasting benefits to organizers and host sites. Conversely, the risks of running a major event are acute and variegated. So too are the penalties for botching it: public opprobrium, reputational damage, possibly even legal challenge and regulatory blowback. For organizers, effective all-hazards planning is the only solution to help mitigate topline risk and keep attendees safe. But with so many variables involved in major-event management, it’s easy to ask, how to get started?

Everywhere you turn, disruptive critical events are in the news – so too, the companies they affect. Just look at the Forrester report, Take A Unified Approach To Critical Event Management: the study finds that 100 percent – yes, you read that right – of companies surveyed had experienced a critical event in the last two years. That’s not even the full extent of it. Many of those companies actually dealt with multiple incidents during that time frame: the average was four, discrete critical events in a two-year period.

By now, we know the grizzly details of the March 15 terror attacks at the Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, the deadliest mass shooting incident in New Zealand history. All told, fifty people were killed, and scores injured at the hands of a self-described white supremacist.

A run-through of what happened

How prepared are organizations to tackle critical issues and major crises? That’s the question we at Noggin and our partner Deloitte have been posing to invited guests in our inaugural series of breakfast seminars, exploring the theme of overconfidence and crisis preparedness.

Last Friday’s (March 15) horrific attacks at the Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch already rank as the deadliest mass shooting incident in New Zealand history. Fifty people were killed, and scores injured in an act of terror unprecedented in the island nation.