Due to enduring political, social, and economic challenges, such as Supreme Court rulings on gun crime, diversification, equity, and inclusion, the war in Ukraine, return-to-office (RTO) orders, and the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, U.S. firms are now confronting a greater number of dangers. Physical security, cybersecurity, IT, human resources, and legal and compliance executives believe in immense pressure to distinguish risks to save their business money and decrease obligations. They are also concerned about maintaining employees, their CEO, and senior executives secure as they come back to offices and work remotely.
According to a recent survey by the Ontic Center for Protective Intelligence published, “2022 Mid-Year Outlook State of Protective Intelligence Report,” however, almost one-third of executives believe their companies will miss at least a quarter of these risks before they can cause harm.
Ontic’s report includes officials in four departments accountable for safeguarding businesses: physical security, cybersecurity/IT, human resources, and legal/compliance. These opinions were from C-suite executives at major U.S. corporations. A total of 400 respondents, including chief compliance officers, chief security officers, chief HR officers, chief infosec officers, and those in comparable jobs, took part in the poll, which was performed in June and July 2022.
Most of the threats that will be faced by institutions through 2022, including weather extremes, aggressive and violent behavior or risks, activities that jeopardize fidelity to the law and regulations, and incidents that affect IT security, are unlikely to be met with failure by most organizations, according to the leaders Ontic surveyed. However, the research also revealed that many businesses only give physical safety homage.
A large majority of respondents (64%) claimed that employees at their organizations fail to promptly report unpredictable or violent conduct or other warning signals, while a comparable number (63%) claimed that organizations downplay danger to make their settings seem safe.
“Our study reaffirms that threats to businesses are many and varied, ranging from hostile written, verbal or physical actions against others, radical rhetoric or hate speech on social media and actions that compromise IT security or compliance with laws, to extreme weather events that can make working conditions unsafe, as such, cross-company threat data-sharing continues to be critical and even minor lapses in communications can result in serious security concerns.”
Fred Burton, executive director of Ontic’s Center for Protective Intelligence
Here are a few more significant conclusions from Ontic’s study:
98% of respondents stated risk assessments or threat management training to identify behavior in the workplace that could escalate to violence or cause harm is crucial for their team to effectively carry out their duties, with 71% saying it is extremely crucial.
66% of respondents reported that in 2022, their organization obtained or examined one or more threats every week, with a quarter expecting to do so up to 260 times per year.
Many executives in all four functions claimed that because their divisions weren’t informed when employees were dismissed or suspended, it led to violence or other negative effects. Most responders (75% in human resources, compared to 72% in legal and compliance, 66% in physical security, and 60% in cybersecurity/IT) claimed that notifying them had resulted in injury or violence.
While 43% depend on employees to adopt the “if you see something, say something” strategy to security, regardless of whether they’re working from home or in the office, 54% do not have a system in place that enables staff members to send reports in a confidential manner.
78% of the 110 publicly traded company executives polled claimed that their organization’s expenditure in security services (such as funding, planning, and policy development) is effectively based on risk variables revealed in its public SEC filings, along with the 10-K risk factors. 77% of the executives also agreed that these risk factors merely scratch the surface of the bounds and density of security threats they explore and obtain.
“To function in this new turbulent normal, to grow and thrive, organizations must cultivate a culture of security. Information, action, communication, training, and habit can mitigate business and mission-critical threats and liabilities, preserve business integrity, and ensure critical resilience.”
Lukas Quanstrom, CEO of Ontic
Quanstrom continued:
“Communication silos still exist, and different departments are inefficiently assessing the same threat. But it is heartening that U.S. companies continue to actively consolidate their multiple threat intelligence, monitoring, and alerting solutions. Our research says it can’t happen fast enough: a majority said three-quarters of threats that disrupted business continuity resulting in harm or death at their company in 2022 could have been avoided if physical security, human resources, cybersecurity, and IT, legal and compliance shared and viewed the same intelligence in a single software platform.”
Lukas Quanstrom
Information from Corporate Compliance Insights