@Risk

How would you rate your company’s business continuity plans? Do you feel confident that your organization could adequately respond to threats to its operations, people and supply chains?

According to the 2010 Business Continuity Benchmark Report recently published by Marsh, many European firms would answer those questions with a healthy dose of overconfidence, leaving them highly vulnerable to physical disruption and economic conditions. (more…)

Ten nations are at “extreme risk” of losing access to clean, fresh water, according to the latest Water Security Risk Index, released by Malplecroft last week.

Those ten nations are: Somalia (1), Mauritania (2), Sudan (3), Niger (4), Iraq (5), Uzbekistan (6), Pakistan (7), Egypt (8), Turkmenistan (9) and Syria (10).

To calculate the water risk index, Maplecroft measured these four key areas surrounding the issue: (more…)

Corporate boards and senior executives are becoming increasingly disconnected from their organizations’ security and privacy decisions, according to new research from Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab.

That’s more than a little disheartening to hear, considering that cyber attacks are increasingly common and increasingly effective. In fact, Symantec now estimates that attacks like these cost businesses an average of $2 million per year. They cause loss to productivity, efficiency, revenue, and customer trust.

CyLab’s new research, which follows up on a 2008 study, included a survey of 66 business execs at the board or senior executive level from Fortune 1000 companies. Based on the data collected, CyLab was able to uncover several disturbing trends. For example: (more…)

BDO has generated a list of the top 20 risk concerns of U.S. technology companies.

Part of the 2010 BDO RiskFactor Report for Technology Businesses, the list was compiled after an analysis of the risk factors reported in the fiscal year 2009 10-K SEC filings of the 100 largest publicly traded U.S. technology companies.

Interestingly, this year there’s a tie for the number one risk. Nearly all (94 percent) of the companies studied cited “competition and consolidation in technology sector” and “failure to develop or market new products/services” as risk concerns. (more…)

Despite an apparent downward trend in attack frequency over the past few months, terrorism remains a significant threat to businesses, according to the 2010 Aon Terrorism Threat Map, issued last week by Aon Crisis Management, a business practice of Aon Corporation.

The map assigns a threat level (Low, Guarded, Elevated, High or Severe) to countries throughout the world, and not surprisingly the 2010 edition identifies Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Somalia and Yemen as the modern battlefronts for terrorism.

The U.S. retained its Elevated classification, although terrorist incidents over the past year (the Fort Hood massacre, the foiled Christmas Day airliner attack over Detroit and last month’s bomb scare in New York’s Times Square, e.g.) helped push the U.S. higher up within the Elevated category. (more…)