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The BC Mindset for Addressing Unknown Business Disruptions
In this new webinar from Continuity Insights – The BC Mindset for Addressing Unknown Business Disruptions – we’re going to ask a crucial question that addresses the unknown – “Does the data that you meticulously gathered and the disruptive scenarios you prepared for fall short of matching the event that disrupts your businesses functions?” There is no simple answer, the resulting scenario can leave you scrambling to find an effective way to ensure that your critical operations can continue. Join us on Wednesday, June 2, 2021 at 2:00 p.m. ET for The BC Mindset for Addressing Unknown Business Disruptions as we help you consider your audience and the types of questions that illicit helpful information in order to build a plan that is flexible in execution allowing you to adapt recovery efforts to the actual business disruption. We’ll be joined by Bill Morris, Senior BC Product Consultant, and Rebecca Wein, Marketing Manager, Virtual Corporation, for an insightful discussion on finding the most effective way to ensure that your critical operations never miss a beat. Registration for The BC Mindset for Addressing Unknown Business Disruptions is now open here.
Continuity Insights Launches Second Episode of Personal Security in Challenging Times: Situational Awareness
The second episode in Continuity Insights’ new educational program, Personal Security in Challenging Times, a short video series for personal and family safety against potential violent situations, is now available. Episode Two – Situational Awareness – launched today. Personal Security in Challenging Times is being presented in partnership with Everbridge. The series is hosted by Steve Crimando, MA, CHPP, CTM, an internationally known consultant and educator specializing in the application of the behavioral sciences in homeland and private security, violence prevention, crisis management, and disaster response. He is the Principal of Behavioral Science Applications, an innovative operational risk management consulting firm based in the New York Metro Area serving a global client base. He is also a member of the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals. Personal Security in Challenging Times is based on Crimando’s innovative RADAR training program (Recognize ● Avoid ● Defuse ● Redirect). Individual short-from video segments (5-10 minutes) will deal with Situational Awareness, Street Smarts, De-escalation, Handling Hostile Encounters, Approaches to Upstander Intervention, Civil Unrest, and Vehicular Violence. A new episode will debut weekly. Watch the second episode of Key Concepts: Recognizing and Responding to Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violence, Situational Awareness here. Episode Two Overview LESSON TWO: SITUATIONAL AWARENESS Recognizing and Responding to Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violence (REMV) (Length: 8:04 minutes) Who we are and how others see us can impact our safety in public spaces and how we might experience harassment or aggression. The increase in reported hate incidents ranging from verbal attacks to fatal assaults is ... Read more
The Role of Crisis Communication During an Emergency
By AlertMedia: 2020 was not the year to be without a crisis communication plan. From the COVID-19 pandemic to the California wildfires to widespread protests and demonstrations across the country, a different crisis situation captured headlines nearly every month – often with multiple crises occurring at once. These events surfaced a difficult reality for businesses: the increasingly important role of crisis communication. Every crisis brings new challenges, which vary depending on the size and scope of the scenario at hand. And while different types of crises present different challenges, there is one constant: weathering a crisis requires strong real-time communication, follow-up, and an effective crisis management strategy. In this post, we’ll discuss what crisis communication is, how it relates to overall crisis management, and outline the critical components you need when forming a comprehensive crisis communication strategy. What Is Crisis Communication? Crisis communication refers to the collection and dissemination of information related to an emergency or other situation. Effective crisis communication protects an organization’s business and reputation by providing context concerning a particular issue or incident of public interest. Most often, crisis communication responsibilities fall on public relations professionals; however, these individuals typically work in close partnership with multiple stakeholders spanning HR, operations, and customer-facing teams and directly with executive leadership. In recent years, organizations have increasingly incorporated crisis communication into overarching business continuity and emergency planning. This is due to the strategic—and urgent—nature of this work and a desire to align PR efforts with the organization’s overall emergency response ... Read more
Seven Ways to Bungle Your Crisis Response (and your career if you’re in charge when it happens)
By Jim Lukaszewski: For more than 40 years I have been teaching and pleading about ways to handle crises effectively. Given that the number of crises has remained the same during that time frame, I’m going to take a different approach. But first, let me share my philosophy about crisis management and mismanagement. How Problems Become Crises All crises begin as smaller, manageable organizational or leadership problems. Problems migrate into crises for three crucial reasons: Management ignores problematic issues in their formative stages before actual crises begin happening. All crises create victims, and they are intentionally ignored, and often defensively attacked. It is a behavior that is learned both in management school and as a practice by upper-level managers and leaders. I refer to this often as “cohort domination.” It’s like calling your cohort member or mom before you call the fire department. Knowing intuitively what the correct steps are likely to be, but refusing to go in that direction, because it’s irritating, it’s an admission of failure, or you want to try something. The major lesson of more than 40 years of helping smart people and people who should know better reduce or eliminate their bungling is simply this: All questionable, inappropriate, unethical, unconscionable, immoral, predatory, improper, victim-producing, and criminal behaviors are intentional. All ethical, moral, compassionate, decent, civil, and lawful behaviors are also intentional. The choice is always available, always clear, and always up to those in charge. Unconscionable intentions, behaviors, actions, decisions, those that vilify, damage, demean, ... Read more
Sungard Gives Enterprises Streamlined ‘Edge to Everywhere’ Access
Sungard Availability Services, a leading provider of highly available, cloud connected infrastructure in North America and Europe, has announced the expansion of its global network interconnection capabilities, significantly bolstering its reach and capacity worldwide. This software-defined network delivers flexible, performant and cost-competitive private interconnection, allowing Sungard AS to extend its network fabric to customer locations and empowering customers to rapidly address the rising demand for seamless connectivity end to end. Sungard AS’ multi-faceted network transformation initiative addresses challenges customers experience as they go through their digital transformation journey. The ability to dynamically scale and change interconnection is a market-leading capability required by enterprises utilizing today’s agile IT architectures. This transformation offers customers a broad set of benefits, including: Software-defined networking to rapidly scale and change services A cost-effective and converged network fabric Seamless access to Sungard AS hybrid cloud architecture Direct on-ramps to all major cloud providers Sungard AS has forged a strategic partnership with Unitas Global, a leading provider of connected multi-cloud environments, to complement its own portfolio of services. As a carrier-neutral data center provider, Sungard AS sought a partner that had the key technology to address the improved agility and cost efficiencies enterprises require to run their business. To that effect, the ability to utilize Unitas Nexus™ and Unitas Reach™ capabilities made all the sense in the world. Through its partnership with Unitas Global, Sungard AS will transform its data centers into connectivity hubs for: Colocation services Hybrid cloud services Recovery services Hyperscale cloud services SaaS provider ... Read more
Witt O’Brien’s Launches CO:RE™ — First Corporate Resilience Program Specifically Designed for Medium-Size Companies
Witt O’Brien’s has announced the launch of CO:RETM, a managed service that is built on the firm’s decades of crisis management experience across sectors and globally. CO:RETM integrates business continuity, crisis management, and crisis communications. It provides a tailored resilience program for mid-sized firms seeking to protect their staff, clients, and enterprise value in the face of increasingly frequent and severe disruptions. “Mid-sized companies face the same threats as their Fortune 500 competitors,” says Tim Whipple, CEO of Witt O’Brien’s. “These range from pandemics, hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes to cyber-attacks, supply chain failure, or a product recall. Failure to prepare and respond effectively can threaten personnel, customer service, and even commercial viability. “However, mid-sized companies do not generally have the resources to build effective in-house resilience programs, and traditional consulting solutions have been cost-prohibitive,” Whipple continues. “CO:RETM is a cost-effective managed service that delivers a resilience program tailored to each client’s needs, while leveraging Witt O’Brien’s staff of over 300 professionals to provide the planning, training, exercising, and crisis response expertise that mid-sized companies lack.” Subscription to the CO:RETM program includes development of a crisis management playbook, 24/7 crisis team activation, real-time strategic advice on crisis management, business continuity, communications, and annual training exercises to enhance preparedness. “CO:RETM is a force-multiplier for executive leadership,” adds Devin Sirmenis, Managing Director. “It delivers peace of mind for medium-sized companies: knowing that they have a plan and a strong team secured for round-the-clock support.” Learn more at Witt O’Brien’s.
Pandemic News: Early-Warning “Pandemic Hub Plan Unveiled
The United Nations Health Agency has announced an international hub for pandemic control is to open in Berlin to ensure better preparedness and transparency in the fight against likely future global health threats. Supported by the German Government, the centre will specialize in gathering epidemic intelligence, data, surveillance and analytics innovation. It will open later this year, according to Chancellor Angela Merkel, who explained how she had first discussed the idea last autumn, with World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Joint Action “The world has learned that we can only meet a global challenge such as the current COVID-19 pandemic through joint action,” said Chancellor Merkel, in a pre-recorded video message, broadcast during a press conference at the WHO in Geneva. “Meanwhile, we have also realised that the WHO is the central global health institution in this effort. An essential basis for the fight against future pandemics is data. Data that, when bundled and processed with the correct analytical tools, yields insights that we could never discover on our own, or at least not so quickly.” The WHO is the central global health institution in this effort Chancellor Angela Merkel Echoing the need for greater cooperation and information-sharing between countries to complement existing international health regulations, Tedros underscored the likely recurrence of new global health threats: “The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed gaps in the global systems for pandemic and epidemic intelligence. And it’s a fact of nature that there will more viruses that will emerge with the potential ... Read more
Enhancing Community Resilience Through Social Capital and Connectedness
In 2020, we saw a record 22 events associated with weather or climate-induced losses that exceeded $1 billion along with a global pandemic unmatched by scale in over a century. These events harm individuals, families, communities, and the entire country, create significant economic impacts, and exacerbate societal tensions. Social capital and connectedness can help communities build resilience in the face of these threats and hazards. Our new report identifies key topics within this framework that applied researchers can focus on as we look to strengthen capacities for hazard mitigation and resilience across the nation and around the world. Enhancing Community Resilience through Social Capital and Connectedness: Stronger Together!, a new report from The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, explores three important applied research topics within the natural hazard mitigation and resilience realm: Inspiring Communities to Create and Sustain Social Capital and Connectedness Bolstering Community-created Digital and Public Spaces Building Social Capital through Financial Investment Strategies The report builds on and extends past work on this theme by the National Academies. Related reports are available from the National Academies Press, through its Social Capital and Social Connectedness collection. Download the report here.
Regroup Mass Notification Receives 2021 Unified Communications Product of the Year Award
Regroup Mass Notification, an industry-leading provider of emergency and day-to-day communication solutions, has announced that TMC, a global, integrated media company, has named Regroup as a 2021 Unified Communications Product of the Year Award winner. The award is given to a select group of nominees who have demonstrated the most innovative products and solutions in unifying communications over the past 12 months. For the fourth consecutive year, Regroup has been ranked among globally recognized communication brands for its continued work on developing the best mass notification solution on the market. “Regroup is once again honored to receive this award and its acknowledgment of our mass notification system,” said Chris Utah, COO of Regroup. “Our entire team is driven by continuous improvement and innovation in our product so that our clients can enjoy peace of mind and the assurance that Regroup helps them keep their teams safe and informed.” Regroup’s advanced features like geo-targeting, strong API capabilities and native mobile app make it a clear winner in Unified Communications’ award program. Additionally, Regroup has demonstrated continuous improvement and commitment to keeping people safe and informed during uncertain times with features such as active COVID-19 mapping capabilities. Winners of the 2021 Unified Communications Product of the Year Award will be announced online and highlighted in INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine online. To learn more about Regroup’s award-winning platform, visit regroup.com.
Survey: Americans Concerned About Mental Health, Want Public Safety Agencies to Improve Response to Crises
Rave Mobile Safety has released its 2021 Mental Health and Emergency Response Survey results. The findings show that Americans are concerned about mental health generally and want to see first responders, including 9-1-1 call takers, police, EMS, and fire fighters, improve emergency response involving mental health crises. To understand if Americans believe mental health is a pervasive issue and how first responders should respond to emergencies involving mental health, Rave Mobile Safety partnered with independent research firm Researchscape to survey more than 1,000 American adults nationally in April 2021. The key findings of the survey indicate that: Americans are concerned about mental health—and that level of concern has increased over the past year. The majority of respondents believe public safety agencies need to make improvements to better respond to emergencies involving mental health crises. Respondents believe there are multiple ways public safety agencies can increase public confidence in their response. Areas of improvement include training in mental health response for first responders, dispatching mental health professionals with first responders and access to mental health histories for 9-1-1 calls. Respondents are concerned that mental health crises will impact their safety as we return to normalcy post-pandemic. Concern for Mental Health in America Almost all (94%) respondents are concerned about the state of mental health of Americans, and one in three respondents are extremely concerned. That worry has grown one year into the pandemic; two-thirds of respondents say they are more concerned about the state of public mental health now than they ... Read more
