September 24, 2009 • 7:34 AM
I woke up early yesterday morning to the sight of a organge-red sky over Sydney. The dust cloud was stirred up by the freak, westerly storm that travelled from the desert to the east coast. The photo was taken at 6.30am at King’s Cross. As my friend Jim said succinctly over lunch, “smog is responsible for some of the most beautiful sunsets you’ve ever seen”.
It is day 3 in Sydney and I am meeting with friends and ex-colleagues. I was last here in March 09 and this time round can’t help noticing a change in tone when certain Aussie leaders talk about “The Recession”. Unlike the UK, Australian political leaders and media commentators are extremely up-beat about their country. The banking system, although not perfect (still run by 4 big players), was not exposed like other nations. Property prices remain fairly firm.
I am of course very happy for Australia. The country has relatively low unemployment and GDP is far more robust than other in industrialised nations.
Yes, they have good reason to be cheerful. But can they dial it down a little?
Filed under: Uncategorized
September 13, 2009 • 10:52 PM
Last week I met with a chap who knows a thing or two about cyber crime and online security. My crisis communications work (for a rather unusual client, facing even somewhat usual online threats to reputation) brought me to this London city hotel to discuss with a partner new ways of helping customers understand/manage multiple online risks.
Whenever you get two ‘risk managers’ together (me, a coffee-addicted comms consultant, my tea-drinking companion, a risk-manager for a financial services organisation) it is fairly easy to reach consensus. Within 10 minutes there was an inordinate amount of nodding and chin rubbing. Organisations today are dealing with a multitude of tail risks (minor risks that alone will not halt the operations of a company). But when parallel risks unfold at the same time (ie. ‘concatenated risks’) they represent potentially significant business risk. Thereby creating fairly tricky communication challenges.
Corporate websites for banks or companies like RyanAir used to be adjuncts to internal databases, displaying selective information or booking systems alone. Today, increasingly, the website is the infrastructure. If we are to believe what internet specialist Kelvin Kelly told us [in Dec 07 in a rather good TED talk] we are moving toward ‘The One’ network (where data networks are increasingly connected/linked).
As to tail risks, there are interesting recent examples of course. Remember when a solitary laptop went missing with Nationwide in 2007? The company was later fined £1 million. An amount far greater than the replacement cost of the laptop. The resale value of the data on the illegal market (current black market value for personal banking data) is £60 per user. Factor into the equation that the financial services regulator (FSA) can potentially stop or restrict trading on evidence that company databases have been corrupted.
If we are moving towards The One network, with increasing reliance on one online channel for all organisational data and communications, the nature of crisis preparations have to fundamentally change. Risk managers are fully aware of this sort of risk. It is good to know some in-house comms teams are also increasingly aware.
Filed under: Uncategorized , crisis communication, risk management
