Chair: Martin Gill

Panellists:
Jason O’Neill – Chief Executive Officer at Sirta Solutions (US)
Darren Carter – Group Director Security, Safety & Sustainability at Edwardian Hotels London (UK)

Key Points

Jason O’Neill emphasises the essential component played by good incident management in overall security, and how this is going to grow in prominence going forward. He outlines some of the benefits, in preventing further incidents and generating a better response when things go wrong, all the more important given how quickly bad news spreads these days. There are several factors that influence whether incident management will be effective, for example, there needs to be a speedy response, there needs to be a focus on the facts, communicated in a way the reviewer understands, if done really well costs may be included and so too the impact on third parties. Likewise more advanced technology will integrate incident management with other systems such as HR and some use AI enabling better management of more data producing more informed outputs with less errors. The key though is for organisations to decide what they want and to devise a system that achieves specific objectives.

You will hear Darren Carter discuss three levels of incidents and discuss challenges such as cultural differences (and indifferences) and a lack of training noting that if incident reporting is to be effective it must be manged, and that does not sit just in software or a book. He highlights the benefits of expediency and brevity, detail, he warns, blinds people. He distinguishes between an alert and an incident report, the latter should have more functionality. You will hear Darren outline some of the limits of technology and the importance of a review process. Systems can be complicated, sometimes unnecessarily so. A key requirement is to understand what is important, in practice risk assessing contexts, that is a vital prerequisite to effectively developing effective management of the response. When it comes to managing risks Darren underlines the value of insurers who share a commitment to reducing incidents and improving the management of them.

Of the many interesting things about this webinar a key feature for me was the insight on the intricacies of ensuring the initial response is effective, because if it isn’t then everything that follows is compromised to some extent. We learn that technologies are important and evolving but once again the key role played by people is emphasised.

Martin Gill
7th October 2021