As is painfully well known to many companies that have endured crises, social media can be a troublemaker: An irate consumer posts a recording she captured of some impolite customer service she experienced from your company, and it’s being re-Tweeted ad nauseum. Or, a diner’s video of a cockroach backstroking through your restaurant’s clam chowder…
Does your organization have a workplace violence policy? Are there procedures to follow? Has your organization conducted an active shooter or other violent intruder drills or exercises? Are your staff and other key stakeholders prepared for such an attack? How would your staff respond and how would you manage the event? Answers to the above…
Violent situations can happen at a moment’s notice and are typically planned events. Dallas police just experienced an active shooter situation that took five police officers lives during a peaceful demonstration. How do you prepare yourself and your organization for violent attacks? Do you have a process for evaluating your organization’s ability to respond to…
According to Wikipedia, Hurricane Sandy (unofficially known as “Superstorm Sandy”) was the deadliest and most destructive hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, and the second-costliest hurricane in United States history. The importance of preparing for hurricanes can’t be overstated. Families, individuals as well as businesses and government and none government entities need to have…
In episode 14 of the PreparedEx podcast we discuss the development of a hurricane exercise and scenario. We walk through the various stages of creating the objectives and scenario as well as discuss how we put the various multi-media visuals together. Our creative manager, Jenny Svenstrup joins in the conversation which includes how she works…
How does your organization prepare for hurricane season? It’s almost hurricane season in the US and many communities, businesses, and property owners are starting to prepare. Knowing your surroundings and talking to the local emergency management agency to find out the hurricane risks can be a good place to start your planning. Are you…
In episode 13 of the PreparedEx podcast, we discuss exercise criteria and provide some examples of exercise criteria and how PreparedEx evaluate using a tool known as Fulcrum. Benchmarking one facility or one area of the business against others essential provides better data and overall understand of where the organization is with respect to readiness….
When creating a cybersecurity tabletop exercise to validate the organizations ability to respond and manage a cybersecurity incident, consider the following three exercise goals. Validate Leadership Decision-Making One of the most important functions of a leader in a crisis is to stabilize the situation as much as possible. A very important aspect of crisis leadership…
In episode 12 of the PreparedEx podcast we discuss exercise objectives. One of the most important, if not the most important step, in the design and preparation of an exercise is to determine exercise objective(s). It is not unusual for individuals planning an exercise to want to begin by focusing on a specific scenario. While…
When was the last time your organization carried out a full review of its overall state of resilience? Probably never. Business continuity, crisis management as well as your disaster recovery strategies are all essential components of your organization resilience. In episode eleven of our Podcast series, we interview Martin Gomberg. Martin is a renowned data…