Control Risks is an expert risk organization with processes all over the world. The CEO of the company Richard Fenning spoke at the time of a recent visit to the country regarding looming hurdles.
Is cyber security, which you identified a year ago as a high risk factor, still as important?
Cyber security is going to be a huge issue problem next year. We are in that phase where capability of criminals and states to outpace ability of the companies to protect themselves carries on. We will carry on seeing these attacks next year. I guess there is an outside likelihood that we might witness some shocking attacks. The queries a number of our users ask is not “can we totally defend ourselves?”, but it’s “are we defending ourselves sufficiently in comparison to our rivals?”
Reputational risk on account of sexual harassment allegations has emerged as a new factor. What’s your view?
Absolutely! It is like wildfire, once it is out it will propagate. To a certain limit, you cannot defend yourself if you have someone on your panel of directors who has acted in this style in the earlier period. You in your organization have almost certainly got a ticking time bomb. It is how you then cope with it professionally that counts. We will witness firms get improving at executing that, performing in a way that permits the organization to shift the whole humiliation on to the person. It is harder for organizations that get blamed of having institutionalized bad behavior. We are in one of those instances where behavior that was accepted 15 Years back is completely not acceptable these days. There is a speed problem here. The velocity at with which behavioral terms modify is much faster in comparison. That is probably social media being a boosting factor in all that.
