Crisis management | Cyber attack a top threat to businesses, study shows

David West

The Business Continuity Institute’s (BCI) Horizon Scan report was presented yesterday at the Asia Emergency Management Conference 2016 (AEMC), revealing that cyber attacks were the number one threat to businesses across the globe.
Horizon Scan, an annual research report, is a tool used by those working in the fields of business continuity and risk or resilience, according to BCI’s community engagement manager David West.
The report showed that cyber attacks remain the top threat practitioners are concerned about, while concerns over physical incidents rose significantly this year.
“Obviously worldwide, there has been a lot of cyber incidents, and that is the number one threat people are thinking about at the moment,” said West.
West suggested that cyber attacks are increasing worldwide, some of which hack information with the goal of stealing money.
The report showed that data breach is ranked as the second highest threat, followed by unplanned IT and telecom outages; terrorism and security threats.
“The other threat was terrorism and obviously this is huge in a global context at the moment,” he explained. “It affects everybody globally.”

Freddii Lee

The manager said that cyber security could certainly be a threat to Macau, adding that casinos should be extremely concerned about cyber security.
“I would say cyber security is a threat [to Macau],” says West. “Cyber security would be of important to the airlines, ferries, to the road transport,” he added.
West admitted that the report didn’t note anything specific to Macau as the study was only region-specific, he implied that access to important information such as results of trend analyses remains a barrier for several organizations, thus weakening resilience.
“This strengthens the case for breaking down silos and encouraging engagement among management disciplines that build overall resilience,” West stated.
Meanwhile, on the second day of AEMC 2016 chairman of the Institute of Crisis and Risk Management in Hong Kong, Freddii Lee discussed the importance of strategic crises leadership in the 21st century.
“Normally organizations will develop their soft skills […] but the major one [that needs development] is to [learn] how to execute management crisis decisions,” Lee told the Times.
The chairman implied that businesses have been underestimating the importance of such management skills, adding that organizations only access such plans after a crisis occurs.
Moreover he believes that Macau has yet to understand the resilience of casino businesses in the event of an Asian economic recession.
“Macau is a small region in Asia. When economic recession affects trade businesses in Macau, how will they react? Are they ready?” he asked.
Lee stressed that the region needs to have such an awareness in case an economic downturn affects it, emphasizing the importance of implementing a mechanism and framework to enable a crisis management prevention capability. Staff reporter