9/11 Revisited: The Future Homeland Security Practitioner...

We are approaching the 9/11 anniversary and the images and memories will be revisited.

Many of us will shed a tear and millions will recall where they were and what they were doing, on that unforgettable Tuesday morning in September, 2001. 

The education of "Homeland Security" is taking place on a daily basis in the popular press and on the new social media platforms that have risen and now dominate the digital content since 9/11.

The academic and government institutions have strived for improving the standards, processes, rule sets and protocols for anti-terrorism policy. By education, we also need to explore what we are doing to collaborate at the academic institution level on a global basis, not just on a government basis. 

The "Homeland Security" curriculum at universities in the EU and the United States will soon be converging on several fronts and for good reason. The generation that will be starting their 1st year (freshmen) in college were not even born yet in 2001.

Their perception of what Homeland Security is today and the future for a life long career must be designed on a global basis, because this remains a global issue. 

The students who pursue an education in languages, political science, international affairs, history and science have just as much a stake in the future of Homeland Security as others. Those who are now getting a degree in emergency management, criminal justice or risk management, or information security are well on their way, yet still may lack the knowledge and tools their liberal arts colleagues have learned to be better analysts, intel targeters or linguists. 

A flash back to this article on "Homeland Security Intelligence" (HSI) , reminds us that regardless of the university education one receives, the future of effective strategies across the world will stem from intelligence: 

(27 February 2011 HSI: Homeland Security Intelligence…)

“What is the modern definition of U.S. Homeland Security Intelligence (HSI)? Many would differ on the jurisdiction, sources and nexus with specific intelligence that falls outside U.S. borders. The future of sharing relevant pieces of the vast mosaic of information may well lie with the definition and the interpretation of Homeland Security Intelligence.

One thing is certain about this topic of debate. If the information is being utilized to determine the nature of a threat within the confines of the U.S. Homeland, then that information will be treated according to the laws of the United States. This brings us to the next question. Are the current laws an impediment to more effective Homeland Security Intelligence (HSI) processes, methods and outcomes? The following areas must be addressed in order to get closer to the truth. 

• Governance
• Policies
• Regulatory and Statutory Concerns
• Civil rights and Liberties

Yet the question begs the discussion on the structure and the purpose of the Intelligence Community (IC) itself.”

Whether the homeland security incident is a natural catastrophe or a man-made threat, there are several components that all people pursuing a profession in the discipline should be developing with increased competency, including risk mitigation, legal framework, ethics, communication/collaboration, alternative analysis, supply chain, critical infrastructure, emergency/crisis management and terrorism. 

Those kids who were not even born yet on 9/11, may have a different perspective on what might be important these days in order to detect another attack of the same magnitude during these times of heightened digital and mobile awareness.

They grew up with the Internet and they don't need a class in Social Media 101 or how to use TikTok. They might however, also need some training in AI or the Deep Web, if they want to support the HSI infrastructure, or understand the adversaries modus operandi. 

The definitions of Homeland Security Intelligence (HSI) and what comprises the spectrum of relevant and legally obtained information may differ from country-to-country and state-to-state.

Is it legal to perform digital triage on an iPhone that has been part of a lawful search and seizure in the State of Ohio, USA? 

The education for Homeland Security professionals beginning with the university must take into consideration the requirements that exist for collecting, analyzing and sharing relevant and legally obtained information. The next step is to determine the correct skills that must be developed, before the newly minted student is filling out their first job applications or interviewing for their first internship. 

As we reflect on the 9/11 25 year milestone, we can all admit the journey has not been easy. It is still far from over.

Let the next decade produce our next generation of Homeland Security professionals who may decide that Social Media and Internet AI expertise is just as vital to the curriculum as Privacy and Civil Liberties.

Watch this area to converge dramatically over the course of the next few years and for the Supreme Court in the United States to make some landmark decisions…

Virtual Truth: False Information Risk...

How does "False Information" impact the risk to your organization? 

Decisions based upon faulty or inaccurate information is the root of many of the systemic failures of catastrophic history. The Titanic, Challenger Shuttle and Three Mile Island nuclear incident can all be attributed to the integrity of vital information.

Fast forward to the financial crisis and the past decades of consumer credit expansion strategies. What data have you been collecting from US consumers or clients about their personal identifiable information attributes?

The Information Age has drawn us into a more dangerous business operating environment as these digital assets have become another commodity to be sold in an international market place, to the highest bidder. Are you ready when the federal "Suits" or the local LEO's (Law Enforcement Officer) knock on your door in pursuit of the truth:

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) spells out rights for victims of identity theft, as well as responsibilities for businesses. Identity theft victims are entitled to ask businesses for a copy of transaction records — such as applications for credit — relating to the theft of their identity. Indeed, victims can authorize law enforcement officers to get the records or ask that the business send a copy of the records directly to a law enforcement officer. The businesses covered by the law must provide copies of these records, free of charge, within 30 days of receiving the request for them in writing. This means that the law enforcement officials who ask for these records in writing may get them from your business without a subpoena, as long as they have the victim’s authorization.

The financial integrity of your future as a business and as a consumer is at stake. Christopher Burns brings this to light in a dramatic fashion in his book; Deadly Decisions:

"First, it is often extremely difficult to validate, corroborate, or verify the information we are dealing with, except by comparing it to the other information we are dealing with. And often the whole system is contaminated by misunderstanding, bad data and false assumptions that are hard to spot. The truth test rarely works. And second, the real issue of truth is not whether you or I should believe this or that, it is what we believe together. The truth that matters is group truth, and where we get into trouble is when a whole organization--a company, a community, a nation--starts to act on information that has been gathered from many sources and processed by many people but has come to contain significant elements that are false.”

Trusted Information is at the core of current global trading, business transactions and the fabric of our own personal identities. False information and knowledge is what creates operational risk factors that can change a whole company or the integrity of a whole nation.

Systems that comprise vast databases of "so called" trusted information are at our fingertips being utilized to make coherent and effective decisions. Yet what may be the more catastrophic Operational Risk beyond the simple stealing of information is the potential opportunity for the destruction of vital information.

The vulnerability of our institutions and the critical infrastructure of the United States economy is ever more at risk of a systemic loss. While our stolen data will continue to be sold to the highest bidder on a global platform for trading, the 4GW "Non-State" actors will change their modus operandi. This is a given.

Trusted Information systems that have certified integrity and the oversight controls to ensure the highest level of virtual truth is the "Holy Grail.”

The degree to which these same systems include false knowledge is our most complex problem for business and government in the next decade…

OSINT: If Intelligence were a Baseball Game...

What is Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)? Why is it important to your security and safety? How can you really understand how it is the same or different than other types of intelligence? Let's use this clever baseball analogy:

If Intelligence were a baseball game....

IMINT takes a picture every day or so, trying to discern whose winning from sporadic snap-shots at different times of day, different angles of look.

SIGINT tries to bug the dug-out and discern how the game is going from comments by the players

HUMINT tries to recruit the batter, find out where he thinks he is going to hit the ball, and send a spy out to catch it if it ends up there.

MASINT tries to smell the player's armpits and the arc of the ball from leather secretly treated beforehand.

OSINT gives everyone in the audience a baseball glove, and counts the ball out if anyone in the stands catches the ball.

What's the point? OSINT is not a substitute for spies, satellites, or secrecy. It simply takes all the low-hanging fruit off the table so the secret sources and methods can focus. Put simply, OSINT changes the rules of the game--eliminates all the "home runs" by the enemy that need not occur if we harness the distributed intelligence of the audience--and allows the secret sources and methods to focus more carefully on what's left inside the playing field.

So what? Open source intelligence is available to everyone at the touch of a button, Google and others. Intelligent bots troll the net in search of its target. Looking for the answer to the algorithim created to answer the question posed by it's designer. When it finds what it is looking for it brings it home to the clandestine machine with Petabytes of RAID.

The people behind the question look for a pattern. The question or hypothesis is there to accomplish an important task. To find some relevance in a vast sea of “Zeros and Ones” beyond the human brains capability to grasp. No one person owns it and has the ability to keep it secret, forever. Somehow, someone will put this information into the open. Then it becomes OSINT.

The race isn't about keeping information safe from being stolen or revealed to others. It's about something else:

Jeff Jonas, the one time chief scientist and distinguished engineer at IBM’s entity analytic solutions group, had developed a means of sharing corporate data without revealing what that data contains.

This technology, called anonymization, effectively "shreds" information, making it possible for companies to share information about their customers with governments or other companies without giving away any personal data.

Over time, Jonas believed companies will increasingly use anonymization to defend their data, and corporate well-being, from competitors and identity thieves.

This story to be continued…

Trust Decisions: The Wealth of Our Cognitive and Digital Transactions...

As you embark on your journey out the door today, you will be required to make dozens of "Trust Decisions".  You and the digital smart machines and the numerous human and digital trust transactions that you will encounter is quite fundamental.  Or is it?

As you walk into your office building the surveillance cameras are watching you and recording your behavior.  The iPhone in your pocket is transmitting your unique signals to digital data sensors embedded in the lobby.  As you press the button on the elevator to go up to your office, you are making another affirmative decision to trust.

When you step off at your floor and approach the door to your office, you might utilize your small "Radio Frequency Identity (RFID) device to swipe a small square mounted on the wall.  You hear the deadbolt unlock and you are now granted access to your office space to start your workday.

Now as you approach your corner office, you glance at the top of the screen of your iPhone to see if you are connected automatically to the corporate wireless network and the VPN.  When you were granted access to the office, the corporate computer network knew you were now present in the office and you have been automatically granted access for your role on numerous software applications on your computing devices.

Start your day at work and now the number of digital trust encounters has just begun.  The "Trust Decisions" that you and your digital devices will be making, could reach into the hundreds after a long 8 hour day.  

Yet there are five principles that emerged in May of 2015 from Oxford professor and author Jeffrey Ritter in his book "Achieving Digital Trust" we should consider now:

• 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).

Think about a day in the life of your entire organization and the number of digital trust transactions that have nothing to do with actual monetary currency transfers.  The wealth that is being described here on first glance may be thought of in terms of dollars or yuan or property, yet what about the wealth of human trust?

 A plentiful amount or an abundance of anything.  How tangible is the decision to trust the computing machine before you, or the person sitting across the desk who is a key supplier or that new client half way around the world just sending you a text message?

You see, we walk to work and communicate everyday, making hundreds of trust decisions.  Our corporate computing devices are making tens of thousands or millions of transactions of trust each hour.  The rules, information and calculations are known, because they are being measured.  Jeffrey Ritter says it this way:

Take a moment and think about each of these with respect to what you do in your business or in your job. How does the organization acquire wealth? Where does new wealth originate? How are customers retained? What provokes them to keep coming back and paying for your goods or services? Why does the leader in your market succeed? If you are not the market leader, why not? How is the loyalty of your team maintained? 

 The future is clear and becoming more revealing to us each day.  Digital trust, security and privacy of your organization and our societies are being defined before us in plain sight.  Can you see it?

Making "Trust Decisions" today at work and as you navigate home for the evening will be more apparent.  A heightened understanding of digital trust and how you engage with these transactions each waking hour may assist you in creating new wealth.  Improving the trust you have with AI computing machines and others at home or work, can make all the difference in life.

Where do you work and live?  Washington, DC.  Denver.  London.  Dublin.  Zurich.  Sydney.  It doesn't matter anymore because we are all connected by the Internet.  The opportunity for the societies of our planet to utilize "Information & Communication Technology" (ICT) to produce greater wealth is still before us.

How will you proceed with your “Trust Decisions”?

ORM Tools: So Many Choices...So Little Time

As the software marketplace begins to mature with the newest systems for various facets of Operational Risk, how do you know what software tools are right for your organization?

For starters, there are dozens if not hundreds of specific tools on the market today for helping you manage everything from Risk and Control Self Assessments (RCSA), Supply Chain Risk to documenting processes for SOX 404 compliance. 

"You can benefit from building your structures for processes, business strategy and tests for procedures. This still leaves many choices to evaluate and vendors who will flog you with powerpoints."

There are several key components of the ORM Framework Management that are essential when considering software tools to assist you:  

Policy 

Create security policies, standards and procedures, distribute them online, educate and train employees, and track compliance, exceptions and violations.  

Threat 

Comprehensive and customizable early warning system providing notification of physical and digital threats, vulnerabilities and malicious code to help prevent attacks before they affect the enterprise.  

Assets 

Manage enterprise assets such as buildings, vehicles, inventory, servers, applications or data centers and their relationships to ensure you are protecting your critical assets according to management expectations. 

Risks 

Perform online risk assessments to determine the proper controls to be implemented on specific assets based on their use and risk to the enterprise. 

Incidents 

Report incidents, manage their escalation, track investigations and analyze resolutions.

In evaluating the current information security, regulatory and legal environment, consider these five key flaws with today’s ORM software solution programs:

1. Dependence on inadequate and incomplete technology-based point solutions; 

2. Failure to integrate people, process and systems into an effective operational risk program; 

3. Lack of decision support and an actionable understanding of the threat to the entire spectrum of corporate assets; 

4. Reactive response to perceived problems rather than proactive initiatives based on sound risk management principles; and

5. Cost and shortage of properly skilled IT personnel to suport the programs.

The Gartner Group has identified three major questions that executives and boards of directors need to answer when confronting significant issues: 

•  Is your policy enforced fairly, consistently and legally across the enterprise.
•  Would our employees, contractors and partners know if a violation was being committed?
•  Would they know what to do about it if they did recognize a violation?

If you don't know the answers to these questions then there is much more work to do and much more strategic planning necessary before any software system is implemented for Operational Risk Management...

Intellectual Capital Risk: The Shamrock Organization…

What is the economic value of the Intellectual Capital(IC) in your organization? Where can you find your most valuable IC assets? Are they in the vault? Are they in the database?

Or are they sitting at the MacBook Pro at home or in the office next door? How do you know what assets are the most precious to the continuous continuity of your business?

These questions and more are at the heart of every "Shamrock" organization.

 A Three-Leaf concept originally coined by the author Charles Handy in his classic 1990 book, The Age of Unreason:

The Core
One leaf of the shamrock represents the core. These are the founders and thought leaders of the organization along with the most qualified professionals or technicians. The core is a flat hierarchy compensated purely on the results of the entire entity.

The Contractual Fringe
The second leaf is known as the contractual fringe. This is both individuals and organizations who may have their own shamrocks. These are paid for results, not for time. In fees, not wages. This leaf provides the core with intellectual assets that are essential to the organization yet are independent or even former members of the core.

The Flexible Labor Force
The third leaf of the shamrock is known as the flexible labor force. This is the flexible labor force that the core utilizes in a just-in-time talent or labor basis. Their specialized skills are tied to the intellectual assets these individuals possess to be efficient and effective for a set time period. They are treated by the core as a valuable component but realize that they will never have the commitment or the ambition of the core. They get fair pay for their contract labor.

What is Intellectual Capital?

Now with our 2021 U.S. economy changing and adapting for decades from a production-oriented economy towards a significant software driven knowledge-oriented economy, your intangible assets are becoming more and more digital. To make better products, to deliver better services or to perform better, as a company in general we need to accelerate the origination and analysis of new found knowledge and know-how.

In that perspective, we could say that our new real knowledge originates from our minds into some form of data, that has now become the key predecessor of any physical labor and financial capital.

To make your company relevant and even more valuable, you will not only need the digital data, computers, and production facilities, ...... you will also need the innovation drivers that makes your company evolve beyond your own imagination.

These “Core” innovation drivers are your “People” with their know-how and experience, your designers of internal processes to guide the business flow and also the proactive interaction with your Alliances/Partners and your key customers.

Without these “Innovation Drivers”, your company wouldn't function at all and therefore, they are of tremendous "Capital" importance. This is your real "Intellectual Capital".

The volume and speed of new “Intellectual Capital” production in your organization will determine how you will perform in an accelerating global arena of competition.

It is the difference between our success and our failure.

"No matter how good the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or idea may be, without a consistent flow of new found Intellectual Capital, and the development of new tested prototypes, no outstanding and ground breaking results can be expected."

Now the question remains, how will you measure your organizational Intellectual Capital (IC)?

Without a way to measure it, how are you going to know what IC assets need to be managed and protected for the longevity and continuity of the business?

Where are they located? Which are most valuable? Who is the person or who are the people who own it?

People risk is one of the four major categories of Operational Risk Management.  How are you managing, measuring and protecting “Intellectual Capital” in your organization?

Human Factors: Minds Eye of Risk...

Flashback to 2007.  There seems to be some continuing debate out there about the concept of adopting a strategy of "Protection" vs. "Resilience".

The question is whether to focus your resources and assets on preemptive or adaptive missions.

Whenever organizations adopt the guards gates and guns mentality as a high ratio of deployed assets and presence, it does have a deterrence effect.

Having a high profile, showing your hand and creating a visible barrier to obtaining the desired target(s) can have a positive outcome.  However, it must be in greater balance with the ability to be agile and to adapt to human factors.

Resilience represents a layered approach with multiple contingencies and the mindset that even the highest walls, stealth technology or deepest oceans will not prevent catastrophic failure from a future occurrence.

The topic along with the Critical Infrastructure nexus has been discussed in depth for almost the past decade. Grants, studies and academia have found this "Protection" vs. "Resiliency" debate worth writing about:

"The goal of this working paper series is to point out trajectories of the concept of critical infrastructure resilience in theory, policy, and implementation. On the one hand, “resilience” may just be another policy buzzword; but on the other hand, it might indicate a shift in perception and priority of threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences. Indeed, the Critical Infrastructure Task Force (CITF) has recently recommended to the Homeland Security Advisory Committee (HSAC) to “Promulgate Critical Infrastructure Resilience (CIR) as the top-level strategic objective - the desired outcome - to drive national policy and planning.”

Defined broadly as the ability of a system to withstand to and recover from adversity, resilience is increasingly applied to larger social and technical systems. Stress and adversity are experienced not only by individuals and groups, but also by organizations and institutions. In the context of increasing natural and man-made threats and vulnerabilities of modern societies, the concept seems particularly useful to inform policies that mitigate the consequences of such adverse and potentially catastrophic events."

While each of the authors in the white paper cited above from George Mason University in 2007 have their unique perspectives on the topic being discussed, yet Lewis J. Perelman, Senior Fellow
Homeland Security Policy Institute, in Washington, DC gets the prize:

"The allure of resilience is stoked by the contradictions and thorny tradeoffs inherent in traditional concepts of ‘national security’ in an age of increasing social-technical complexity, transnational ‘globalization,’ and ‘asymmetric’ conflict. Certainly, ‘homeland security’ has realized, since 2001, both political impetus and bureaucratic mass. Nevertheless it has been fraught by a tumultuous and yet unresolved quest to reconcile legitimate but competing social objectives:

• Security against attacks vs. security against natural disasters, disease, accidents, etc.;
• Intelligence operations vs. privacy;
• War-fighting vs. human rights, civil liberties, the rule of law, etc.;
• Needs for secrecy vs. needs for information sharing;
• Federal responsibility vs. state/local/private authority;
• Centralized command and control vs. communal collaboration.

As the debate continues on a hard vs. soft policy perspective Perelman identifies one of the key components of Operational Risk Management. Human Factors.  His suggestion of adding human factors to the equation for risk is critical to the issue:

Risk = HF(Threat x Vulnerability x Consequences)

where HF is a function of the “soft” human factors that translate the “hard,” physical parameters of engineering failure into human perceptions, emotions, and behavior.

Human behavior and the perception of risk continues to be at the center of the overall discussion. Socially, what is more of a threat?

Loss of the use of a half dozen buildings, an entire city or the Internet itself. Is the threat a hurricane, a radiological device or the most deviant virus known to date?

The perception of "Risk" as being in the eye of the beholder is not new here. The policy being shaped across the globe however, is moving rapidly towards a mindset of agility, adaptiveness and endurance.

That alone, should be the clue that "Resilience" will remain a major facet of the risk strategy paradigm of choice again in the next decade...

General Counsel: Directors Top 10 Mistakes...

"There is no question that AI is materially affecting business models and operations. Now that it's getting serious attention from shareholders, employees, other corporate stakeholders, boards need to pay attention, too." Corporate Board Member Magazine

In the July/August issue of Corporate Board Member Magazine in 2006, an article by Randy Myers talked about ten insightful and reinforcing items of interest.

General Counsel to Directors: Your 10 Most Common Mistakes

The in-house lawyers think that you've got a lot to learn about risk, trust, and reward. And when there's trouble, you too often fail to follow the Boy Scout creed: Be Prepared. By Randy Myers

1. Not Asking Questions
2. Failing to Understand the Company and the Risks it Faces
3. Failing to Lead on Ethics and Compliance
4. Not Insisting on a Crisis-Management Plan
5. Speaking out in a Crisis Before the Facts are in
6. Relying on the Wrong Outside Counsel
7. Failing to Understand Attorney-Client Privilege
8. Underestimating Regulators
9. Giving too Much Leeway to Rainmakers
10. Getting Caught Up in the dilemma of False Options

And as Randy so clearly has stated: "Serving on a corporate board isn't easy. Avoiding these common mistakes should be."

We can't accept that No. 4 even is on this list. No. 2 and No. 3 is ever so common place. And No. 7 is not a surprise. But what continues to amaze even those professionals associated with consulting to the Board of Directors is No. 8.

Fast forward to 2019.

"The number of public companies disclosing artificial intelligence (“AI”) as a material risk factor in their SEC filings has grown exponentially from virtually none in 2016 to more than 80 this year alone."  --By  Lisa Fontenot and Cassandra Gaedt-Sheckter

The Chief Risk Officer (CRO) is the independent keeper of oversight in the corporate enterprise. Should any organization be the subject of an investigation by the SEC, FTC or any other government regulator, they need to look to the CRO.

It's the job of any CRO to keep regulator awareness at a high level and to let the business be in charge of risk management. Whenever you see a CRO getting involved in managing the risks of the business, then the independence and clarity of oversight has been extinguished.

The General Counsel and the Chief Risk Officer must work hand-in-hand to follow the Boy Scout creed:

Be Prepared.

Privacy: The "New" Age of Unreason...

In the new age of unreason, Charles Handy the author of The Age of Unreason would say that discontinuous change is upon us. He would say that we need to outsource everything that is not a core function of the enterprise. And he would say that learning, is the same as change from a different worldview.

Mark Zuckerberg came to Washington, DC, on Thursday to claim the mantle of Martin Luther King and the Founding Fathers as a champion of free speech. Standing in the stately Gaston Hall auditorium at Georgetown University—which has hosted the likes of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Bono—the Facebook CEO declared, “I’m here today because I believe we must continue to stand for free expression.”

And a city full of regulation-hungry politicians and foes of Big Tech undoubtedly thought: How’s that working out?  --Ars Technica-Steven Levy, wired.com - 10/19/2019

Making changes is also about learning what those changes will mean, to everything that interfaces with that change. It means that testing must take place in a lab or compartmentalized area of the business to insure that the change doesn't impact the core operations.

In the words of Charles Handy:

"Learning is not finding out what other people already know, but is solving our own problems for our own purposes, by questioning, thinking and testing until the solution is a new part of our lives."

"If changing is, as I have argued, only another word for learning, then the theories of learning will also be theories of changing. Those who are always learning are those who can ride the waves of change and who see a changing world as full of opportunities rather than damages. They are the ones most likely to be the survivors in a time of discontinuity."

Adaptation in order to survive in the corporate world is nothing new. The risks associated with making new decisions depend on how that decision will impact the other persons, processes or systems in the enterprise.

It means observing performance and measuring the results, to determine if the change is worth the new risks that the organization is about to encounter...

Operational Threat Matrix: The Mission Ready Many...

"Five years after the release of the Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity, organizations across all sectors of the economy are creatively deploying this voluntary approach to better management of cybersecurity-related risks. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued what is now widely known simply as the “NIST Cybersecurity Framework” on February 12, 2014."

Measuring an incident first requires defining a taxonomy on what an "incident is" and what an "incident is not". In other words, how can you measure something that has not been sufficiently defined in your organization. How do you know when an incident has occurred?

Our corporate assets are under attack by a continuous barrage of new laws, new employees, new competitors and new exploits.

Business survival in the next decade will require a more effective and robust risk strategy to deter, detect and defend against a myriad of new threats to the organization.

Modern day attackers include hackers, spies, terrorists, corporate raiders, professional criminals, vandals and voyeurs. Simply said, these attackers use tools to exploit vulnerabilities. They create an action on a target that produces an unauthorized result. They do this to obtain their objective.

The Mission

The organization shall develop, implement, maintain and continually improve a documented operational risk management system:

• Identify a method of risk assessment that is suited for the organizations business assets to be protected, regulatory requirements and corporate governance guidelines. 
• Identify the assets and the owners of these assets. Identify the threats to those assets.
• Identify the vulnerabilities that might be exploited by the threats.
• Identify the impacts that losses of confidentiality, integrity and availability may have on the assets.

Assess the risks. Identify and evaluate options for the treatment of risks. Select control objectives and controls for treatment of risks. Implement and operate the system. Monitor and review the system. Maintain and improve the system.

The Take Away

While you were in the Board of Directors meeting, your Operational Risk Profile changed. When you were asleep last night it changed again. The people, processes, systems and external events are interacting to create a new and dynamic threat matrix for your organization.

Who is responsible for Operational Risk Management in your business? Everyone is. You see, if everyone in the organization was able to understand and perform the mission flawlessly, then the business could stay in constant control of how much incidents are costing the enterprise.

Only a guarded few understand the mission of operational risk management in your company. Only a guarded few can do it flawlessly.

If you want to protect your corporate assets better than you do today, then turn those guarded few into the mission ready many.

Trust: In Pursuit of Implicity...

RSA 2019 was another event for the vast spectrum of security and privacy professionals to reflect on, regardless of the color of hat you wear.  One word seemed to be prevalent in this years atmosphere:


trust (trŭst)n.

1. Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing.

—Related forms
trust·a·ble, adjective
trust·a·bil·i·ty, noun
truster, noun

—Synonyms 1. certainty, belief, faith. Trust, assurance, confidence imply a feeling of security. Trust implies instinctive unquestioning belief in and reliance upon something: to have trust in one's parents.

To have real trust in something or someone, you don't even think about it. It's implicit.

If you start to think about it, then it is not really trust in it's purest form. In Operational Risk Management (ORM), we are always in pursuit of trust. We want to trust our sensors, monitors and fail safe process.

Yet we know that this is why we train for contingencies. Because failure is always a possibility, even if it has a .00000000000099 probability.

As a true Operational Risk professional, you train for the remote possibility of failure and create alternative scenarios to test your contingencies. And when you find what works through exercises and experimentation, you put that in your memory bank or cache of alternatives. Never knowing when you will have to use it again.

And when it comes to trust and human beings, there is only one way we know you can get to implicity. It is through testing, training and observable behaviors.

And when this person or software algorithm has demonstrated that they are able to repeat the tasks, actions and behaviors with a .00000000000099 probability of failure, that is when trust begins to become inherent.

"Trust will not be accomplished 100% through AI / ML technologies when humans are still creating and writing the code. Nor the convergence of information in a database. It can only be forged through actions and observable behaviors."

Outcomes based upon sound planning, training, testing and continuous contingency operations. Only then will we reach the level of implicity we seek.

OPS Risk: Military Lesson for Wall Street...

Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it's digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules - not just for governments but for private companies. Bill Ga
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/bill_gates_626047?src=t_privacy

 "There is no avoiding the realities of the information age.  Its effects manifest differently in different sectors, but the drivers of speed and interdependence will impact us all.  Organizations that continue to use 20th-century tools in today's complex environment do so at their own peril."  Stanley A. McChrystal

Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it's digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules - not just for governments but for private companies.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/bill_gates_626047?src=t_privacy

Almost ten years ago, Air Force Brig. Gen. Mark W. Graper, the 354th Fighter Wing commander at EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE Alaska, quoted the essence of Operational Risk Management.

Corporate Executives and mid-level management should have this made into a poster for their office and hanging in every hallway:

"Summer is just around the corner, and many of us are planning for our favorite warm weather activities - fishing, hunting, hiking, motorcycling, camping and more. All of our summer plans can be fun if we keep in mind the basics of operational risk management: Accept risk when benefits outweigh the cost; accept no unnecessary risk; anticipate and manage risk by planning; make risk decisions at the right level; assess and mitigate risk. Stated more simply, have a (prudent) plan, have a backup plan and have a Wingman."

Whether you are focused on the safety and security of your personnel, the integrity and confidentiality of your information or the continuity of your business operations, consider this.

Effective "Operational Risk Management" will improve your organizations resilience factor.

The brilliance of Brig. Gen. Graper's emphasis on this subject away from the flight line or "The Office" is his understanding, that most of us will become more complacent the minute we hit the parking lot.

You see, OPS Risk is not just something being advocated in the Wall Street workplace. It should be just as pervasive at home or in our own leisure activities. Whether you are climbing "Denali" or entertaining friends around the backyard pool, you have to be continuously in OPS Risk mode, or it could bring harm to life, limb or your own reputation.

Operational Risk includes the risk of litigation and there is one item you can be certain that is a threat to your corporate integrity. Employees, partners and suppliers to your organization:

What most organizations the size and complexity of Facebook under estimate, are the speed of change and the socially "connected" market economy. The blur of business combined with the "Holistic Blindness" of what privacy risks are a threat today or this week, can bring an enterprise to it's knees and then to it's ultimate demise.

"Facebook Inc. (FB - Get Report) and the Federal Trade Commission currently are negotiating details of a settlement related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Washington Post reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The penalty imposed by the FTC likely would be a multi-billion dollar fine, which would easily be the largest fine ever issued to a tech company by the FTC. In 2012, Alphabet Inc.'s (GOOGL - Get Report) Google was fined $22.5 million by the agency for user privacy offenses.

The two sides are still negotiating the amount of the fine. If no agreement is reached, the FTC could take the issue to court, according to the Washington Post.

Facebook's privacy issues date back to 2012. Facebook settled a case with the FTC in August 2012, when the two parties reached an agreement that "Facebook must obtain consumers' consent before sharing their information beyond established privacy settings," according to a press release from the FTC published at the time the deal was made.

Facebook's privacy issues continued last March when news broke that Cambridge Analytica, a political research company, had harvested user data beyond what was acceptable. It later became evident that Facebook likely was aware of Cambridge's actions on the platform" 

Whether it's collecting user data to sell to your supply chain or keeping your F-22 Raptor in the air to defeat hostiles, OPS Risk is the differentiator. Your survival depends on it...