5 Security Strategies to Support your COVID Recovery
There is little doubt that businesses have been tested over the past year. Those that survived are those that were able to adapt quickest. But we are now looking at recovering from the last year as quickly as possible and fulfilling all those plans for growth we had prior to the pandemic.
But what about security? What role does that play in your recovery?
The role of security is to create a safe environment and prevent problems from happening. A proactive approach keeps the business safe and allows it to operate efficiently. But it also saves money! A proactive security programme is characterised by its lack of surprises, where issues hardly ever become problems that cost the business money.
In this blog, we reveal the 5 proactive strategies we use to protect businesses, keeping them secure and helping them to save them money.
Avoid
Avoiding the risk altogether is probably the first thing to consider. Whatever activity or asset that attracts the risk could be changed or removed.
For example, you can avoid some risks to lone workers by not having any members of staff work on their own. Or you can avoid the risk of cash being stolen by not keeping cash on site.
Reduce
When considering reducing risk, there are two specific aspects of risk we are looking to reduce: the likelihood of an event occurring, or the impact of an event should it occur.
For example, if there was a risk of burglary, you could introduce regular security patrols to disrupt any would be intruder. To reduce the impact of a data breach/ loss, you can back up your data.
Share
The concept of risk sharing is about dividing the risk between two or more participants. The easiest way to think of it is a partnership, usually between a third party supplier.
For example, we collect and destroy confidential waste for our clients. Our clients share the risk of a potential loss with us.
Transfer
With the practice of transferring risk, you are transferring the risk directly onto a third party. The most common form of risk transfer is via insurance, but that is not the only way.
For example, you can transfer risk by an indemnification clause in a contract i.e., the other party would be required to cover any costs etc. should an incident occur.
Retain
You could also choose to retain the risk. In most cases, risks are retained because they are so low that the cost of applying any of the other techniques outweighs the cost of the risk should it occur.
For example, to reduce the loss of office equipment such a pens and paper could be easily implemented, but in reality, the disruption to the business performance outweighs any benefits of reducing the risk. Most businesses retain this risk, and just buy more pens and paper!
We have mentioned only the 5 main strategies, there are many more techniques that can be used as part of these. For example, risk concentration is a method of reducing the risk by concentrating your assets into an area with the greatest protection.
At Equilibrium Risk, we take a proactive approach to security management. Our aim is to create a secure environment in which a business can operate and grow.
If you would like to know more, we are running a webinar where will reveal further information about how security can support your recovery.