Facilities Safety: +Beyond Travel Risk Management...

Have you ever wondered where high value assets are located in your facility or on your campus? Especially those that are mobile assets. Have you ever wondered who and where visitors to your offices or campus facilities are located at any given time?

Ekahau is making the answers to these and other questions much easier and at a more rapid response. Safety, production costs, and time-to-market are vital points of consideration for industries, education and campus organizations.

"By being able to easily track people, vehicles, and assets, these factors can be made substantially more safe and efficient."

Founded in 2000, Ekahau is the recognized leader in location-enabling enterprise Wi-Fi networks. Ekahau's mission is to provide the easiest, most cost effective and accurate positioning solutions for locating people, assets, inventory and other objects using wireless enterprise networks. The Ekahau solution tracks wireless laptops, PDAs, VOIP phones, Wi-Fi tags and other 802.11 enabled devices.

Ekahau’s solution allows businesses to keep track of valuable assets and equipment, improve the overall workflow, and improve the levels of corporate security and customer service. With Ekahau, the critical corporate resources, people and assets, will be always available at the right place and at the right time.

As Ekahau's location tracking solution does not require installation of proprietary wireless infrastructure, but can be done individually over the private Wi-Fi network, the deployment cost is kept in minimum, and the overall system payback time is the fastest possible.

Safety and security applications are numerous especially in Healthcare:

• Emergency management - more efficient and faster emergency response

• Patient monitoring - better patient safety and increased throughput

• Workflow management - better staff utilization and increased patient throughput

• Equipment management - reduced need for inventory

• Information delivery - improved workflow, reduced errors

• Billing support & verification - improved revenue capture

Can you think of other Homeland Security and first responder applications using the Ekahau capabilities especially in post event incident management and key personnel tracking inside a closed perimeter? As WiMax and other 802.11 networks are deployed in major metro locations, the applications become wide spread.

People: Beyond Travel Risk Management...

When was the last time your corporate travel department gave you some timely INTEL?

Maybe you got a report on the current level of risk in the foreign region, city or country you are now scheduled to visit in the next few days. What are you going to do if everything “Goes South” in a matter of seconds or minutes?

The Mission

In situations that require instinctive response, you have to go beyond the traditional travel management report on what to do and who to call. You have to be proactive and make decisions on your own.

In order to survive, one must be trained on the authoritative, detailed description of the methods by which terrorist organizations, hostile intelligence services, and criminal groups select and target specific individuals.

Individuals and a team must learn how they can detect and counter potential threats against them, and their sponsoring organizations to better manage these pervasive operational risks.

These threats could include recruitment by a hostile service, kidnapping or assassination by terrorist and criminal elements or espionage by business competitors.

Combined with real-time INTEL, you must receive intense, real-time instruction in surveillance detection and counter-surveillance so that you can take appropriate actions.

Combining real-time intelligence with a focused surveillance and threat detection-training program is exactly what savvy corporate executives and Chief Security Officers are looking for from a single source.

Personnel threat management is a prudent risk mitigation solution. This combination is one key strategy to mitigate the operational risks associated with key personnel in your organization.

Individuals whose occupations place them at risk may include people with access to valuable proprietary information or holders of high level security clearances, the wealthy and those responsible for their safety.

The Take Away

Combine two parts Threat Detection & Management Training with one part INTEL and you have the perfect combination to ensure the successful completion of corporate or organizational missions across the globe…

Enterprise Security Risk Management (ESRM)

Years ago, “The Gartner Group” has identified three major questions that executives and boards of directors need to answer when confronting information security issues:

> Is your security policy enforced fairly, consistently and legally across the enterprise.

> Would our employees, contractors and partners know if a security violation was being committed?

> Would they know what to do about it if they did recognize a security violation?

In today’s wired world, threats to the information infrastructure of a company or government agency are not static, one time events.

With new ransomware, XaaS, viruses, vulnerabilities, and digital attack tools widely available for download, a “complete information security solution” in place today can easily become incomplete tomorrow.

As a result, a security architecture solution must be flexible, and dynamic.

Presently, news of digital-threat events tends to spread through the computer security world in a “grapevine” manner. Threat information is obtained from websites, e-mail listservs and countless other informal sources.

This haphazard system is incomplete, and therefore raises concern when evaluating the damaging, costly effects of an aggressive, systematic digital attack.

A comprehensive security solution requires the careful integration of People, Processes, Systems and External events.

It shall allow correlation and implementation of a “layered” defense coupled with a firm application of risk-management principles.

To fully protect electronic information architectures, an organization needs current intelligence and analysis that allows constant adjustment and fine-tuning of security measures (e.g., firewalls, intrusion-detection systems, virus protection) to effectively defend against a rapidly changing landscape.

"Threats and vulnerabilities relating to computer networks, websites and information assets must be addressed before an attack occurs. Awareness and the ability to make informed decisions are critical."

How "Proactive" are you?

In short, as the electronic economy plays an increasing role in the private and public sectors, organizations must take advantage of the resulting new opportunities for growth and gains in efficiency and productivity.

Realizing these gains depends on an organization’s ability to open its information architecture to customers, partners and, in some cases, even competitors.

This heightened exposure creates greater risk and makes an organization a more likely target for attack (e.g., information and monetary theft, business disruption).

Furthermore, the cost of critical infrastructure failure climbs exponentially in relation to increasing reliance on increasingly integrated systems.

Your goal into the future is to provide the organization with the following Information Security value propositions:

1. A System with Best Practices to Establish, Implement and Monitor Compliance.
2. Early Warning & Awareness for the Entire Enterprise.
3. Relevant Decision Support.
4. Trusted Threat Information/Analysis.
5. Actionable Threat Countermeasures.

And remember, a Single Enterprise Security Risk Management System (ESRM) will not solve the operational risk problem without the right processes and the correct people to implement such a solution...

Observation: Sensory Informed+Aware+Ready (SIAR)...

In a focus to be more innovative in your particular business or vocation, which of your own human senses are you using most effectively today?

• Sight.
• Sound.
• Smell.
• Touch.
• Taste.
• Pain.
• Hunger.
• Thirst.
• Pleasure.

Anything else?

How well are you using your complete observations that combine these senses with other brain functions to create new insights, new intelligence or safety knowledge?

How many steps are there from your front hallway up to your second story in your residence? If you know the answer, why?

Your observation skill sets are combining human senses and other brain functions to provide you with new insights, knowledge and domain awareness.

Or you may already know the answer of how many steps are in your home because you are handicapped or blind.

You many also know the moment that someone in your house is boiling water on the kitchen stove, because of a unique smell. And you probably know who that person is.

You many know the moment a next door neighbor leaves their garage, based upon the sound of their vehicle.

We are continuously combining our sensory functions and brain functions all the time, even without thinking about it.

"Yet how observant are you really? Do you store your sensory information somewhere for retrieval later? In case you need it?"

What if you became more actively conscious about this by practicing it each day. How might this new observant talent be of a vital use to you and others?

Operational Risk Management requires multi-sensing information processing and response 24x7 by you, not just by your machines.

By you as a standalone human.

If you had to operate for a whole day without your iPhone with you on next Friday, what might you observe? What might you learn?

How might you better increase your own personal knowledge on this Friday.

With the observation of human senses of Time? Of Direction? Of Temperature? Of Weather? Of even a lack of “Knowledge” of what your friends, followers or family are doing each hour of their day.

So what?

Your future abilities of human observation will enhance your innovation capabilities as you continuously adapt to your hourly and daily environment.

Your enhanced personal “Operational Risk” skill-sets will keep you more Sensory Informed, more Aware and more Ready (SIAR) than so many others…

Onward!

CxO: Deter. Detect. Defend. Document.

When you become a new CSO, CISO or COO in your growing Fortune 1000 organization, it all starts to become more clear to you.

In decades past, as we worked with transnational law firms up and down Wilshire Boulevard, you could not possibly know in advance, where and how the next major Board-Level issue was going to raise itself to the top of the clients crisis priority list.

Until the minute, hour, day of the month that it actually happened. Was it a surprise corporate incident that is now in the Yellow zone, Orange zone or Red zone?

The pre-9/11 days of Operational Risk Management in the Defense-Industrial-Base companies around the 495 beltway in Tysons Corner, included slow moving, more visible threats to the enterprise, such as severe weather patterns or a forecasted economic recession. There were just a few digital e-mail viruses that popped up on the Internet and grew exponentially that could become a nuisance.

Two decades later working along side the OPS Risk professionals inside large global enterprises in 2022, requires a more detailed and wide spectrum of analytics capability to truly survive.

In early encounters with struggling CxOs we encountered a People, Processes, Systems and External Events matrix, that was in need of real-time relevant updates.

What if you started your journey of excellence today, with just one relevant threat vector named “Ransomware” to excel:

• Critical infrastructures are those systems and assets-whether Physical or Virtual – that are considered so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.
• As ransomware attacks continue to grow, organizations need to improve their security posture to protect against an attack. Better security requires implementing appropriate security controls and ensuring that effective crisis management and employee education are in place.
• The landscape of how we work has changed since the onset of the global pandemic. We must today assess vulnerabilities in a new way and with increased due diligence.
• The cost of a cyber attack is often significant for organizations large and small, and we must strengthen our responsiveness and continuously reduce behaviors that may open vulnerabilities in the future.

This decade, our CxO focus shall evolve on a myriad of “Pre-Incident” indicators and towards our massive data analytics capabilities, to see over the threat horizons towards your organizations most relevant priorities.

You see, the speed and stealth of the modern day adversary has advanced to a whole new threshold, far beyond human sight. Beyond our range of hearing. Now invisible to the naked eye.

Our Corporate Critical Assets still remain "Under Attack".

4D = Deter. Detect. Defend. Document.

"Attackers use Tools to exploit Vulnerabilities. They create an Action on a target that produces an Unauthorized result."

Attackers do this, to obtain their Objective.

As a 2022 CxO in this day and age, you must accelerate to a 24x7 set of TrustDecisions that Deter, Detect, Defend and Document (4D) your rapidly changing Operational Risk Management (ORM) environments...

Foresight: Circumspection as to Danger or Risk...

As you walk through your business office or around your organizations campus this week, how will you use foresight?

You have always had the ability to foresee and view looking forward, yet how effective have you applied this ability in your current environment?

The act or power of foreseeing is a skill that you can learn and utilize on a daily basis to your advantage. To increase your safety. To insure your security. To expand your prudence.

Are you operating each day in your work or even family activities without ever thinking about the future?

What if?

Do you ever ask yourself this question as you proceed into your day, your week or the next month or are you oblivious to the changing conditions, people, processes and behaviors externally developing around you?

Reactive people who are constantly surprised and organizations that are less than prepared for sudden change events, are ever more present.

Anticipating the future and using real-time sensory data to your advantage is just the baseline towards more effective individual prudence and continuous business foresight.

"The speed of life or the accelerating volumes of data streaming through the digital veins of your organization, just might have you overwhelmed and even distracted."

How might you and your team develop greater foresight and reduce the significant risks in your business future?

As a Team Leader, the answer begins with finding a very scarce commodity these days.

Time.

Let’s just start with 2 hours, across 4 consecutive weeks so 8 blocks of time.

The difference is, these two hours each week with your team shall be devoted to developing greater foresight.

Your skill and good judgement, in the use of resources while you apply this to caution or circumspection of danger or risk, will create a true difference.

Your facilitation of the process and methodology, insures your teams focus on using and applying foresight, in your particular areas of business operations or your teams specific responsibility.

The teams outcomes shall be applied and tested, measured and recorded to determine the true results. For 4 consecutive weeks, your "Business Foresight" and prudence will be rapidly growing. Now repeat in bi-annual sessions.

Your expanding corporate ability to govern and the discipline by the use of team reasoning will ensure a more safe and secure journey into the future…

Onward!

Exceptional: Accelerating to Wisdom…

 Why will you use your ability to discern a course of action that is wise and insightful?

You were born with it and even at the earliest stages of your life, it was soon known that you were exceptional. Rare. Superior.

Over the course of your lifetime, you have possessed the ability to see what others can not. You have the abilities to recall and decide faster with extraordinary accuracy.

How might you utilize your God given talents and the DNA you were born with, to make a real difference here?

Your IQ and your particular part of the spectrum, is an asset that you shall utilize your entire life, in order to benefit others.

The problem-sets you discover in front of your organization, your agency, your business, and your family, are counting on your continuous wisdom.

Even with these abilities and your peer group superiority, you still remain unknown. 

Unpretentious.

Learning more than you already know and applying your deep experience, is still your passion.

What did you read this day, or this week that made you even more curious? 

Who wrote the words that sparked your insightful questions and increased your own appetite for finding out more? Yourself?

"Now you will analyze, you shall create the models and use the tools, to better Understand, Decide and Act."

The vast amount of data and the velocity of the technological innovations before us, will remain our greatest challenge. Our greatest opportunity.

How might you act, to make a difference for the benefit of those you really care about in life?

It begins with your own wisdom. Your own particular talents and your abilities, that will continue to remain exceptional.

Now get out there and make a real difference…

Disaster at 5280: Contingency Planning & Relief in 2022...

As our 737-900 descended over the Rockies into DEN yesterday, there was a clear view of the front range and the Boulder Flatirons in the distance. Snow storms were only 48 hours away, and yet as the extreme winds buffeted our plane we admired the city at 5280 ft.

Only a few hours later as we drove around NW Denver, the smoke started to became apparent. Little did we know that communities just North of us, were on the verge of an unpredictable local catastrophic disaster.

The winds had picked up and now you could sense something was very wrong with the wall of dark smoke blowing East at 75+ miles an hour.

Then we saw the local news about Superior, and the immediate evacuations as the roaring fire headed due East from Rt. 93 and the foothills just West of Superior and Louisville.

24+ hours later, it is still not quite over and we have witnessed 500-1000 homes and a hotel along with some other local businesses incinerated, as fire crews worked through the night to save lives and get people to safe havens.

Once you as a human, come so very close to pure disaster and witness the shear power of mother nature and her ability to devastate everything in her path, of the fire, and the wind or the water…you realize you are never going to be totally prepared.

In 2022, let us all agree, that we can only devote more time to understand, making more informed decisions and acting quickly to our respective rapidly changing events, incidents, threats and inevitable crisis.

Through every disaster across America, there are valuable “Lessons Learned” and for us as humans to respond in productive and heart felt outcomes.

Here are a few quick ideas that may be worthy of consideration with your family:

1. How might you and yours set up a digital “Cloud” account in Box or Amazon or Google or Protonmail, to upload and place copies of your most vital personal .pdf or scanned documents, home insurance, tax records and even business/financial information?
2. How might you place a fireproof lockbox/safe within your house to place physical documents, Passports, Birth Certificates and other unreplaceables (jewelry, medals, keys) or legal information that may take weeks or months to replace?
3. How might you and your spouse/partner practice with other family members, in other cities across the country, on contingencies and family actions, just in case Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Floods or Wild Fires and even Earthquakes occur without warning?
4. What types of insurance coverages have you added to your policies to include certain types of disaster scenarios, that have a likelihood of occurring in your particular geography?
5. Once you have established the baseline for 1-4, how might you improve your planning by exchanging the plans with your other trusted family members and asking each other important remaining questions?

As the local “Denver News” helicopter flew over the remains of these neighborhoods this morning, one could only wonder why some houses were spared and others next door were completely gone with only a chimney remaining?

“Our First Responders and local businesses are still in the first 72 hours of this disaster and yet you can see the sorrow and the emotions on everyones faces.”

Colorado and other NGOs across America will assist in the days ahead and we will grow stronger and more prepared for our next crisis as the snow showers and storms finally arrive here…

Godspeed Colorado in 2022!

Incident Response: Lessons Learned Once Again…

If you may be waking up in the U.S. “Lone Star” state this morning, you might realize that we are still working towards a more effective National Incident Management System (NIMS).

It's just another Operational Risk Management (ORM) and National Resiliency wake up call, to remind us how far we have come since the early days after 9/11 and how far we have yet to go, in our United States readiness and preparedness initiatives.

New types of unpredictable emergency disruptions can wreak havoc on any organization, its clients and the public.

As a result, business crisis and continuity management (BCCM) has become a high priority as organizations recognize the importance of responding to an unplanned event, so that employees and personnel remain safe, critical business functions continue, and relevant people are fully informed.

Developed by the Secretary of Homeland Security at the request of the President, the National Incident Management System (NIMS) integrates effective practices in emergency preparedness and response into a comprehensive national framework for incident management.

The NIMS will enable responders at all levels to work together more effectively to manage domestic incidents no matter what the cause, size or complexity.

The benefits of the NIMS system can be significant:

• Standardized organizational structures, processes and procedures;
• Standards for planning, training and exercising, and personnel qualification standards;
• Equipment acquisition and certification standards;
• Interoperable communications processes, procedures and systems;
• Information management systems; and
• Supporting technologies – voice and data communications systems, information systems, data display systems and specialized technologies.

The process of mitigating the risk of hazards/threats before they become disasters, is similar for both natural and human-caused threats; whether you are dealing with hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, a “Polar Vortex” or acts of conventional or digital terrorism.

Now that threats to business operations of our vital industry sectors are becoming more prevalent, organizations must plan for every type of business disruption from hardware and communication failures, to natural disasters, to internal or external acts of terrorism.

During these times of emergency, where every second counts, NIMS can continue to play a key role in our organization's vital communication system, and their crisis management and business continuity plans.

When was the last time your entire enterprise had an exercise to “Learn More Lessons” about your Incident Response capabilities?

Dialogue: Insight in a World of Risk…

 As you walk out the door this evening, what made you look up? Is there a wonderful sunset in your neighborhood? Were you thinking about the day ahead and saying a silent prayer?

When you enter your next meeting with a co-worker, or a new prospective business partner take a deep breath and really focus on enhancing the relationship.

This simple step could make all the difference in your life. New doors may open or unexpected opportunities shall appear, simply because your own mindset was more aware.

• How do you ask questions effectively and answer others with genuine interest?
• Are you displaying your own patience to truly listen, to understand thoroughly?
• How much of your own empathy is on visible display in your dialogue?

Our world is slowly recovering from a global pandemic disaster and yet there still remains signs of hope and new found signs of human progress.

What will you do today to make a difference? You understand that it won’t cost you anything to smile. It will not be a tremendous burden to demonstrate your interest in really learning from someone else.

Who do you know who: __________________?  So much of our Life is about building valuable relationships, so that you may answer this question with certainty.

Otherwise, how will you solve your next real problem-set? The next crisis in your business or your own personal life without a solid portfolio of trusted people you can count on, people you can call, people you can even iMessage?

Unfortunately, these past 365 days may be full of shallow interactions and distracted interest, in building solid relationships with others. Or perhaps our lives may find hours or days of loneliness and despair.

Yet you have the ability to change this with your next encounter Face-to-Face, or on the phone, or across your encrypted social media platform.

Is it Zoom, Go-to-Meeting, Webex or Wickr? Or are you sitting next to someone you have never met before, on a United 777 over the Pacific Ocean for 6 hours?

Randall Murphy, a founder of Acclivus always taught us this. “Successful dialogue is primarily a process of actively Listening to a persons ideas or information and it is comprised of three components:

• Active
• Empathic
• Insightful

“Active Listening” is understanding what the person is “saying” and why. “Empathic Listening” is understanding what the person is “feeling” and why.

"Real Insight" is gained by combining both, to understand the persons attitude about YOU, your Role and your Organization or what you are truly Advocating.”

Finally, 2021 will be the year we find greater appreciation for things like:

The evening glimmer of sunlight on clean water. The wave from the neighbor who lives next door.

Our faith in what or whomever we believe in. Those who serve, so we can remain free of threats or illness to our loved ones and our own well-being.

The signs that our bodies are healthy. The hope that exists in all of us for finding peace of mind.

In 2021, look with fresh eyes on everyday things…

Cognitive Diversity: Humility in Decision Advantage...

 “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” George S. Patton

Creativity in our fast paced world is even more of an essential element, as we move to working in geographically dispersed locations across the globe.

No longer will you have your leader stopping by your office each day, or leaning over your work station, or across the table at “Peet’s Coffee” to show you how it’s done.

As a leader, you shall encourage the utilization of an individuals own way of solving the problem-set assigned or the persons own process they employ, to reach the expected outcomes.

How else will you discover their new found creative ways and the exploration of innovative and extraordinary solutions?

What if you are an individual working alone in the realm of collecting new found information, that will be applied in the future to prospective targets?

The research skills and knowledge you have learned, is not implemented like a specific manufacturing assembly line.

When you are assigned the role of applying your own cognitive functions in a landscape of continuous change, to arrive at a desired outcome, this requires “Instinct”.

A natural or inherent aptitude, impulse, or capacity to use your own creativity, skills and knowledge, to achieve your assigned outcomes.

As a leader, you shall excel in painting visual pictures, describing what results looks like, sounds like and what indicators will provide you the assurance, you have arrived at the desired outcomes.

How else will your students, your employees, your constituents, your customers know that victory is present?  That you have arrived at your intended destination.  Received the required compensation for your required deliverable.

How much “Cognitive Diversity” do you find in your team?

As a leader, you shall leverage all resources to combine skill sets and mind sets, to gain a “Decision Advantage”.

Think about your “Humility” as a leader.  How will your team describe you, when you are gone…

Incident Response: Leadership of Security Risk Professionals...

Leadership of Security Risk Professionals (LSRP) begins with a thorough understanding of the current state of the “Organizational Pulse” of the corporation.

Global Enterprise Business Resilience does not just happen overnight, after the CEO sends out the first Crisis-based e-mail alert.

It happens because the Organizational Pulse of the respective silos of responsibility, have been actively learning for years about their People, Processes, Systems and External Crisis Events.

Simultaneously, as the leaders of the Security and Risk domains within the enterprise “Ask”, “Listen”, and then “Clarify” or “Verify” vital information, the organization learns.

Global 500 public organizations, small private businesses and non-governmental organizations have true stories and cases that are considered a security risk crisis.

Confronting a crisis and incident response in one organization will be completely different at another, based upon the type of organization, number of employees, geographic locations and their senior executive process for dealing with a significant disrupting event.

The following question was asked at “Company A” and the top answers were:

What are the top five incidents/events that could cause a significant crisis within your organization?

• 
Fire or Flood
Violent weather/damage to facility
• Workplace violence
• Industrial accident
• Terrorism

"When the question was asked a different way, to a different group at the same company, the results were even more telling:"

What are five incidents/events that have caused your organization significant crisis in the last three years?

• 
Counterfeit products or major disruption in the supply chain
Alleged ethics violation of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)
• Geopolitical unrest in key overseas markets
• Extended loss of personnel at a manufacturing plant due to COVID-19
• Data Breach/intellectual property theft by a nation state

Senior executives charged with a “Duty of Care” in todays global enterprise, require new thinking, enhanced skills and relevant solutions to improve crisis leadership.

What is your current readiness factor for the potential of environmental or natural disaster, supply chain disruption, economic espionage, ethics scandal, data breach, employee kidnapping, sabotage, terrorism, workplace violence and other legal risks?

For example, the HR recruiter is more focused on the security risk of hiring a person with a criminal record of violence and substance abuse problems. The Chief Security Officer (CSO) is more focused on the physical and information security of facilities and the Chief Operating Officer (COO) may be more focused on daily operations and securing the resilience of the supply chain.

Throughout the enterprise the functions of physical security, information security, legal and financial liability have all become specialized and these same security risk professionals, have become subjected to the potential for a blindside incident.

“Leadership of Security Risk Professionals” (LSRP) is for industry practitioners to “Cross the Chasm” of crisis leadership...

TrustDecisions: Understand, Decide, Act...

From the Board Room to our modern day asymmetric battlefield, Jeffrey Ritter’s Achieving Digital Trust will open eyes. It provides us with a reference model that management and software architects have been seeking. The survival of the Internet as we know it is currently at stake. This book provides a look into the transparency of «Trust Decisions» and how ensuring digital truth will shape our global governance for decades to come.

"How do you decide to trust digital information that is intangible and cannot be lifted, opened, or flipped through?

What questions do you need to ask to conclude that trust is justified in both digital information and the sources from which you acquire the information?

How do you make trust decisions about people, associations, tools, or their value when the infor- mation upon which you will rely is increasingly digital and intangible?

In a global culture in which digital trust is under attack and degrading, how can you build and engender old-fashioned human trust with your customers, business partners, associates, and employees?

Flooded with digital information, devices, and the capacity for others to question decisions, how can you make better decisions, choose the superior alternatives, and reduce the number of decisions that “just take the risk” because of data that is missing or not proven to be reliable?

Can achieving digital trust be proven to be good business and create new wealth in a global, 24/7/365 marketplace that demands increasing velocity while also increasing the risks of living digitally?" 

  Page 21 Achieving Digital Trust:  The New Rules for Business At The Speed of Light - Jeffrey Ritter

Are you reading this on your Macbook?  iPhone?  Or on one of the dozens of variations of devices using the Android Operating System?  Why?

Think about the origin of the words you are reading.  Are they manifested from the brain of a human who is typing the words on a keyboard?  Or could it be a computer creating this digital content purely from some form of artifical intelligence?

How would you judge the trustworthiness of this digital information, if you could verify that it was written by a person vs. a machine?

All of us make split second decisions on who and what we will trust.  By the way it looks.  By the way it moves.  By the way it smells.  By the way it sounds.

Now, make a slight shift in your mind set to the mechanism we define as "Advertising".

How do you as a human, accept and process an advertisment in a cognitive way?

cog·​ni·​tive | \ ˈkäg-nə-tiv
Definition of cognitive

1 : of, relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering) cognitive impairment

2 : based on or capable of being reduced to empirical factual knowledge

Why are advertisements necessary on the televsion you watch?  Do you every find yourself muting the advertisements?  Do you record all of your shows on the DVR so you can purposefully Fast Forward through the Ads?

At the same time, you may have a brand, company or person that you respect and trust.  You are loyal to that brand, company or person for several reasons.  Much of that has to do with "TrustDecisions".

When you read the words in a book by an author with their name printed on the cover, do you value and trust what they have written?  It depends on the author, right?  Who is that person and do you trust that what they have written is worth consideration.

We all have our own trusted sources of information.  Our Go-To authors.  Our news feeds.  Our verified intelligence.

Now visit this company on the Net:  Primer.ai

Now that you have reviewed the company Primer, and you see and think you understand their product solutions, the people behind the software solutions, the investors in the company, what do you think about next?

After all, a web site is just an Advertisement right?  Your Decision to Trust has all to do with words written, colors used, visual pictures and even sounds (think music).

Based upon what you have read and see, do you trust the products and services of Primer.ai?

Based upon what you have read and see or feel or hear, do you trust your Doctor, your Priest, your Lawyer, your Bank, your Airline, your Employer or your Digital VPN?

You see, most people do not even think long enough about the origins of trust or the origin of their own trust in something or someone.  Unless you are in the business of research, questioning or creating hypotheses on an hourly basis.

Unless these can also mean the life or death of another person and/or the factual truth of something not present to the naked eye, your hearing or your taste or smell.

hy·​poth·​e·​sis | \ hī-ˈpä-thə-səs
\
plural hypotheses\ hī-​ˈpä-​thə-​ˌsēz
\
Definition of hypothesis

1a : an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument
b : an interpretation of a practical situation or condition taken as the ground for action

2 : a tentative assumption made in order to draw out and test its logical or empirical consequences

3 : the antecedent clause of a conditional statement

When you encounter the conscience world before you, whether it be Face-to-Face with another human, with written words by an author, by the spoken words of an advertisement or news broadcaster, think more deeply about this.

• "Every transaction creating wealth first requires an affirmative decision to trust.
• Building trust creates new wealth. Sustaining trust creates recurring wealth.
• Achieving trust superior to your competition achieves market dominance.
• Leadership rises (or falls) based on trust (or the absence of trust)."

 Page 35-36 Achieving Digital Trust:  The New Rules for Business At The Speed of Light - Jeffrey Ritter

Now that you Understand, it is time to Decide.  Then you must Act... 

FIRST Responders: Our New Age of Learning...

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”
― Brene Brown

What will we learn during this COVID-19 crisis?  How did we learn as a result of the incident known as 9/11?

Our vulnerability this time, is far beyond scanning luggage and the new processes for ID check or travel analysis.  Brene Brown has been trying to educate us, in so many important ways.

In all our years of an "All Hazards" Homeland risk management philosophy, what have we learned?  How will we Assess, Prepare, Respond and Recover even better, from this point forward?

What have you discovered about your organizations ability to adapt, innovate, create and change during this first quarter of 2020?  Will you even survive?

One key item may have revealed itself in your experience so far.  How would you improve your organization, when it comes to "Incident Response"?

One truth is, that our individuals who have a "C" in their title acronym, (CEO, CSO, CIO, CTO, CISO, CMO, CRO) have been challenged in new ways.  These same leaders have not trained enough, or long enough in this past decade.  Complacency is now becoming apparent again.

Our leadership skills have all been exposed to the vulnerabilites of people, processes, systems and external events.  We have been caught off guard on a spectrum of challenging global incidents just these past 24 months.  A crisis spectrum that spans our physical world.  Also to our invisible virtual digital world.

Our growing "Incident Response Spectrum" is wide and vast.  It still requires specialized skills and knowledge to address the kind of change, that will now increasingly be required, in Fortune 500 Global Companies, Mid-Market INC 500 emerging businesses and especially, our Small-Medium Businesses (SMB).

How will we continuously Adapt, Create and Change from this point forward?

You almost could have predicted, how well our cities and our local municipal governments would fare in the COVID-19 crisis?  An invisible threat vector.  How?

Look at just one example.  How well have our cities and Critical Infrastructure organizations performed during their "Incident Response" from the dozens of Ransomware Attacks?  Digital malware, that has plagued our cities these past few years.

Ask Baltimore, MD about their particular learning curve, on what they have learned since discovering their own vulnerabilities.  How they discovered the real value. of effective Incident Response.

Look at another emerging example.  How well have our U.S. companies been exercising their "Incident Response" plans with disruptions to our Supply Chains?  Issues with the availability of critical equipment and commodities, that previously would never have thought to be so vital to our ongoing response?

America.  This new era going forward, is going to be about our innovation age all over again.  It will be all about creativity.  And it will be much more about dramatic change.

Most of all, it will be about finding grace.  About our compassion.  You see, we are Americans.  Our endurance and our leadership, is inherent to our people and all of the U.S. organizations, that will rise up to meet this crisis and others in our future.

So what?

Our Incident Response and Security Teams will be learning even more now.  Our organizations will be "Up Skilling" or "Skilling Up," with new found tools, processes and policies.

Our supply chains will become even more resilient.  Our Critical Infrastructure and essential services will be gearing up for the "W" curve of recovery.

So what will you be doing to innovate and create a new mechanism to make us even better?

How will you do it with grace and compassion while working towards collaboration with others, instead of just being competitive?

Our American tragedy, will not just be about how many people have died.  This alone is enough.

Yet, it will be about our FIRST Responders.

This new spectrum of FIRST Responders, is so much wider than you ever realized.  Who is a FIRST Responder in your organization?  In your entire community.

The skills and knowledge of our FIRST Responders from this point foward, must improve, will expand and we will do this all together.

This next paradigm, is about Communication, Cooperation and ongoing Collaborative Education.

Will you join us...