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Risk Management Monitor Zombie Risk Management 101 An emerging risk over the past 10 years has been the rise of undead walkers, or “zombies” and their influence on supply chains, natural resources and mortality rates. These once-alive individuals thrive on human flesh and spread deadly diseases; their exploits have been well documented in California and Georgia for years on basic cable television. Renegade armies have made significant gains in controlling the risks of these attacks and uprisings using makeshift weapons, but sadly, the supply chain is limited due to an outbreak that has been wiping out Americans. To avoid these risks, on Halloween, encourage employees to travel in pairs in case the undead appear out of the shadows, as they often do. Their bites are infectious and pose the risk of death or even worse—you could become one of them. Should you sustain a bite, consider whether you will want to: “Live on” and become a flesh-eater Be placed under special quarantin...

Advids 20 Media Streaming Services Video Examples It’s the age of technology where nothing is restricted to a TV or theatres. Every form of media is accessible digitally or on a smartphone. Media Streaming has become a huge trend amongst young adults. The success of streaming media is pretty recent, but the idea behind it has been around as long as people have. Using streaming technologies, the delivery of audio and video over the Internet now reaches many millions of people using their personal computers – offering live sport, music, news, entertainment and on-demand content. In this article we look at 20 Media Streaming Services Video Marketing examples that are on the spot. Watch these videos to get ideas for marketing your own Media Streaming Services offering. Here we go : Amazon Prime Media Streaming Services Video Amazon Prime is a membership program that gives customers access to streaming video, music, e-books, free shipping and a variety of other Amazon-speci...

Risk Management Monitor Keeping Halloween Parties Safe in the Workplace This year, Halloween is expected to be celebrated by a frightening number of Americans – 179 million. According to the National Retail Federation , 48% of adults plan to celebrate in-costume. These 18-year-olds-and-older are not just chaperoning young trick-or-treaters, many are also employees with their own collective sweet tooth. If you plan to indulge these kids-at-heart with a voluntary workplace celebration, here are some tips to consider: Dress Code Updates Your company’s dress code policy will obviously need some flexibility for the day, but one can still be enforced in an effort to limit costumes or themes that are too polarizing, provocative or offensive. It’s good practice to inform employees that certain dress code policies will be enforced. “Provide examples of inappropriate costumes, such as costumes that are too revealing or are ethnic-, religious- or race-based costumes,” Obermayer Rebma...

Risk Management Monitor Protecting Your Company from Rogue Employees While employee malfeasance rarely takes down entire companies, it can result in serious fines, sanctions, court judgments, settlements and reputational damage. Big data analytics is one way leading companies are able to mitigate risk, by proactively detecting threatening or illegal behavior. Traditional ERM Approaches Won’t Do Compliance officers do their best. They generally work within enterprise risk management (ERM) frameworks to introduce corporate policies and procedures, conduct risk avoidance training and audits, and create inter-disciplinary committees. They work with IT to run compliance auditing software on critical structured data, including financial databases and transactional applications. By targeting only well-behaved structured data, however, compliance officers can lose sight of one key fact—structured data is a small percentage of organizational data. Data storage analysts report that mo...

Risk Management Monitor Recovery Plans Critical Following Active Shooter Incidents October has been mired by mass shootings in the United States. Incidents in which four or more people were shot—the criteria for a mass shooting— have occurred 15 times in the last 18 days . The Oct. 18 occurrence at a business park in Maryland , involving an employee who killed three co-workers on-site and injured two more, has increased the interest in workplace violence and active shooter preparedness plans. As previously reported, only 21% of U.S businesses surveyed felt they were prepared to manage an active shooter situation. And while preventative plans are priorities – and rightfully so – businesses should also consider how to appropriately handle their aftermath. According to a recent white paper published by Everbridge, Active Shooter Incident Consequence Management and the Roadmap  t o Recovery , how a company manages the hours, days and weeks following such a crisis is vital for ...

Risk Management Monitor RIMS Legislative Summit 2017: Focus on Flood WASHINGTON—The RIMS Legislative Summit kicked off on Wednesday in Washington, D.C. with a panel lead by Congressional office staff. Panelists included Lisa Peto, chief counsel for the Financial Services Committee; Democratic Staff in the U.S. House of Representatives: Jason Tuber, Senior Advisor to Senator Menendez (D-NJ); Ed Skala, Deputy Staff Director for the House Financial Services Committee; and Brandon Beall, Professional Staff Member, Office of Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. The focus was the once-again, looming expiration of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). The program that was set to expire in September, but was saved with a temporary extension now set to expire again  on Dec. 8. The panelists, each of whom began with the disclaimer that these were their opinions and not the opinions of their office, came to a consensus that a new NFIP was critical, that a gap...

Risk Management Monitor How Small Businesses Can Prepare for the Next Natural Disaster As we have witnessed these past two months, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria devastated many parts of the south coast and the economies of Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. The damage from the storms is expected to halt U.S. GDP by an entire percent . Recent estimates put the costs of recovery at around $85 billion and $59 billion for Harvey and Irma respectively. While larger businesses have the resources to rebuild and recover, many smaller businesses do not. They will likely struggle to account for the cost of repairs, and even lose their companies in the process. According to FEMA, nearly four in 10 small businesses struck by a natural disaster are forced to permanently shut down . With more storms expected in the coming weeks as hurricane season persists through November, it is vital that small business owners prepare in the meantime. The first step for any small business is to prepar...

Risk Management Monitor New Voluntary Hot Air Balloon Safety Program Announced The Balloon Federation of America (BFA) has instituted new safety accreditation for companies and pilots. The Envelope of Safety program was the result of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) year-long call to action from the commercial hot air balloon industry in response to last year’s mid-air accident in Lockhart, Texas which caused 16 fatalities. The Envelope of Safety aims to enhance the standards for commercial balloon operators and reduce the risk of injury or death leading up to and during a flight. The program is voluntary and aims to reassure confidence by giving consumers the ability to select a ride company or pilot meeting the new flight worthiness certification. The Envelope of Safety’s missions it to insure that companies and pilots carrying four or more passengers: Are commercially certificated for 18 months Accumulate a specified amount of flight experience Hold a second-cl...

Risk Management Monitor When Nature’s Wrath Alters Your Business Travel Plans The recent devastation of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria pulverized Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, displacing hundreds of thousands of residents and racking up billions of dollars in property loss. These massive storms, as well as others, also wreaked havoc on corporate travel, crippling a good portion of the business economy by preventing companies from getting employees to their destinations. FlightAware’s cancellation tracker reached the 3,000 mark the Sunday that Hurricane Irma hit Florida as airports closed throughout the state. But travel issues didn’t ease once the airports reopened, because there was still the issue of missing aircraft. According to reports, JetBlue didn’t have a single plane in the state of Florida and most other airlines cleared out their aircraft from vulnerable airports ahead of the storm. So, flights couldn’t resume until airlines flew aircraft back into the state. ...

Risk Management Monitor N. Calif. Wildfires Continue Widespread Destruction The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) increased the National Preparedness Level to 3 today due to wildfire activity in eight Northern California counties, including Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino, where evacuations, road, trail and area closures are in effect. Since their start on the night of Oct. 8, the wildfires in California’s wine country have caused 23 deaths and forced more than 20,000 to evacuate, including the entire city of Calistoga . Additionally, hundreds of residents are missing. Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in Napa, Sonoma and Yuba counties on Oct. 9 and the Presidential Major Disaster Declaration was approved by President Trump on Oct. 10 to support state and local responses. The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services also activated the State Operations Center in Mather, California to its highest level. The 22 uncontained large wildfires have consumed 170,000 a...

Risk Management Monitor Hurricane Devastation Impacts Health Care Supply Chains The destruction caused by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last month has created major disruptions for the island’s pharmaceutical product and medical device manufacturing facilities. Days of interruption and damage to manufacturing plants are affecting international supply chains for products such as cancer and HIV treatments, immunosuppressants for patients with organ transplants, and small-volume bags of saline, which are necessary for patients who need intravenous solutions. Puerto Rico is the fifth-largest territory in the world for pharma manufacturing and produces about half of the world’s top-selling patented drugs, according to a 2016 report from Pharma Boardroom . Short-term economic losses are being estimated, while concerns persist about the storm’s long-term effect on employees’ abilities to travel to work, the safety and efficiency of the machinery used and the ability to keep the fac...

Risk Management Monitor Words (and Clauses) Matter A recent report published by RIMS highlights the importance for risk professionals—or the person within the organization tasked with the responsibility—to fully understand the language included in their insurance policies. The report A Common Language: Aligning Third-Party Contracts with Insurance Policies, suggests that there are “clauses in contacts that may not be understood as well as others, and some people may be tempted to skim past those to move work along.”  But, in this haste, deciding to “skim” past those clauses may activate exclusions, limitations and even, unknowingly, nullify the transfer of risk to a third-party. Authored for RIMS by Brenda Tappan of United Educators, the report defines key insurance terms that should be understood by contract reviewers, as well as common contract clauses that impact the validity of both the contract and insurance policies. “At any given time, an organization could have hund...

Risk Management Monitor Lawsuits Question Arkema Emergency Preparedness Plan Last week officials in Harris County, Texas were granted permission to file a lawsuit against international chemical company, Arkema, Inc., in attempt to recover the costs of responding to the crisis at the company’s plant in Crosby during Hurricane Harvey in August into September. The County has asked a court to review the plant’s environmental practices and disaster preparedness plan and to determine how, if at all, it was updated to reflect the projections of 50-plus inches of rain in the days leading up to Harvey’s landfall. The New York Times reported  that in its risk management plan to the federal government, Arkema indicated that floods and hurricanes, as well as power failure and loss of cooling, were threats to its Crosby chemical plant. In its filing with the government, however, Arkema did not provide contingency plans to address those concerns, the Times said. As previously reported , s...

Risk Management Monitor October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month National Cyber Security Awareness Month ( NCSAM ) kicks off this week. And in the wake of last month’s Equifax breach announcement —in which nearly 145.5 million Americans learned their personal information may have been compromised, coupled with the government’s recent efforts to combat cyber threats—NCSAM’s timing could not be better. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hosts the annual NCSAM and will provide online and in-person tools to engage and educate the private and public sectors about cyberrisks. The DHS will also offer mitigation tips and techniques in tandem with this year’s campaign, which is divided into five different weekly themes : Week 1: Oct. 2-6         – Simple Steps to Online Safety Week 2: Oct. 9-13       – Cybersecurity in the Workplace is Everyone’s Business Week 3: Oct. 16-20     – Today’s Predictions for Tomorrow’s Internet Week 4: Oct. 23-27     – Consider a Caree...

Risk Management Monitor 8 Legal Developments You Need to Know About In a new RIMS Professional Report , attorneys Mark Plumer and Xandra Bernardo (of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP) and Patrick Walker, a risk professional at mining company Rio Tinto Group, shed light on the top risk management legal developments of 2017. According to the authors, risk managers “must be familiar with the legal principles that underlie claims that are asserted. A successful resolution will turn on the policy wording, the company’s business relationship with the affected insurers and the strength of the  coverage argument under the law.” In The Top 8 Legal Developments You Need to Know About in 2017, the authors lay out the notable rulings on insurance law relating to rights of coverage, rescission, cyber coverage and more. Here is a quick look at their findings: Rights to Coverage: There were important developments to rights of coverage under historic occurrence-based policies. These re...