Businesses need to better understand the unique and complex nature of the terrorist threat in Southeast Asia, and improve gathering information from the right sources and using it to guide strategy and operations.
These are key findings from a report produced by Lloyd’s, in collaboration with the Institute of International Strategic Studies (IISS), which examines the nature of the terrorist threat in Southeast Asia.
The report, Terrorism in Asia: What does it mean for business, launched today at Lloyd’s 360 Live Debate in Singapore, warns that traditional forms of terrorism in Asia are being superseded by area specific threats, such as criminal gangs with political agendas, and businesses need to respond to these.
Richard Ward, Lloyd’s Chief Executive, said: “There is no such thing as a uniform global threat, and in South East Asia, businesses face some complex and specific regional issues. While there are fewer occurrences of Islamist terrorism in the area, criminal gangs with agendas are on the rise, with kidnappings and other forms of violent crime increasingly prevalent in some parts of the region.
The report outlines five practical actions that businesses can take to minimise the threat from a terrorist attack:
- gather high-quality information from the right source – using the expertise of government and academic bodies – to guide strategy and operations
- choose locations wisely – across the world the possibility of a direct attack is low but businesses need to consider the risk of indirect damage
- adopt security as good practice, not a burden
- protect supply chains
- engage with local communities and understand local customs/traditions.
Richard Ward adds: “Businesses need to be better at information gathering from the right source in order to focus on what they are actually threatened with, not reading the media headlines that usually on focus on radicalism, and making decisions based on that.”
The report points out that there is no need to reinvent the wheel when planning risk strategies to mitigate the threat of terrorism. Most resilience strategies are extensions of established good practice and existing knowledge should be utilised to its fullest extent. More generally, security should be viewed as a business enabler rather than a hindrance.
Today’s event in Singapore brought together business leaders to discuss the regional terrorist risk in Southeast Asia, with a number of leading experts covering topics from the role of risk management in protecting business from the threat of terrorism and how real is the threat from Al-Qaeda? Among the high-quality speakers were Dr Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside Al-Qaeda and Peter Ho, Head of the Civil Service and Permanent Secretary, Foreign Affairs at the Singapore Government.
