IISS and Lloyd's launch home-grown terrorism report
7 December 2007
Over 100 business leaders, representing a wide variety of sectors, attended a special event organised by the Institute of Directors (IoD) and sponsored by Lloyd’s in the City on Monday to discuss how business can manage the threat of terrorism.
The ‘Face to Face with Risk’ seminar coincided with the launch of International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) report, commissioned by Lloyd’s, on home-grown terrorism and what it means for business.
Lloyd’s Finance Director, Luke Savage, who opened the event, said firms were beginning to realise the threat to their economic well-being “We have to be alive to the impact these events can have. Lloyd’s is a major bearer of the economical impact of terrorist events, and this year our 360 Risk Project has been exploring the potential impact of terrorism and political risk on business. In our research we found that the vast majority of CEOs think businesses are just as exposed as governments to terrorism risk.”
Nigel Inkster, Director of Transnational Threats and Political Risk at the IISS, said the reasoning behind the report was to make the subject of terrorism “more applicable to a very important constituency – the business community”.
He said: “Al-Qaeda’s ideology is a vision from hell. A vision which the overall majority of Muslims do not share, but it has found sympathy with disillusioned Islamists across the world.
Although there have been no deaths from terrorist attacks in the UK since July 2005, the police have quashed a significant number of plots – 16 since 2000. The aspiration to commit acts of terrorism is there and the number of people tempted in that direction is growing. Many will fail and get caught, but terrorists do not need to be good, they just need to be lucky, once.”
Inkster added: “So what can we do as a business? We do not have to sit in fear and wait for the inevitable. Everyone has a part to play. The idea of this report was to create a one-stop shop where a business executive could find what he or she needed. Much of what needs to be done can be done easy and cheaply and most key security measures needed should be in place anyway.” He went on to say that it can be simple as knowing who is in your building, who you have employed and who is working on your IT systems. He stressed that every business should have in place a business continuity plan that works because it has been tested, and make security part of the corporate culture and see it as a business enabler.
Jim Norton, Senior Policy Advisor e-Business & Government at the IoD, spoke of the threat to businesses from cyber terrorism, and highlighted the importance of having confidence in the business continuity plans up and down the supply chain. He said firms should take simple internal steps to ensure safety, including employing well-trained systems administrators, fitting hardware firewalls and keeping up to date with vendor patches. “There is no substitute for a thorough and holistic risk analysis, a full understanding of supply chain dependencies and regular testing of your defences,” Norton added.
Lord Stevens, International Security Advisor to the Prime Minister and former Commissioner of Police, also called on firms to employ dedicated IT experts. “If you are not up to date with technology and you have left it alone for six months, it is too late. The trick is to have people who are proficient and up to speed with what’s happening. I’m amazed at how poor due diligence is. It is extraordinary how people will do all the calculations on profit and loss and they will fall down in relation to people. People are essential,” he said.
Last updated on 07 Dec 2007
