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You know the saying from your Mum, “You should eat your carrots. They’re good for your eyesight!”.

Carrots are a vegetable and the “VEG” in vegetable is a great acronym for understanding where your blind spots in your thinking come from.

Our blind spots are psychological biases created at the intersection of our Values, our Environment and our Genes. Whenever we are thinking and looking to make a decision, our subconscious is grappling with what is genetically encoded in our brains by nature, what

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I’m writing to invite you to webinar titled “ Mastering Operational Risk. Theory and Practice in a single package” on June 27 at 10:00am EST / 15:00 BST. 

Join me and our guest, Calvin Lee, Operations Director at RISKID, for a lively discussion as we aim to dispel confusion surrounding many of the elements of the Operational Risk framework.

This webinar is designed for both current students of the “Mastering Operational Risk” online course and for other busy risk professionals who are interest

Last week I blogged about 4 wrong questions that I saw organisations trying to answer and wasting opportunity while doing so. Why did they do so? Why do we not always kick the goals we plan on kicking?

One very big answer is that we all have blind spots. They are inherent biases and research tells us that for complex decisions on a daily basis, our error rate is 15%. If we are talking decisions around “big” strategies, our error rate is 40 to 50%. Blind spots hurt us badly.

Let me tell you a story

A well done New York Times article recently re-introduced this topic to the masses. Being “owned” isn’t new, but the term is not becoming part of popular culture. If you use the internet or are often on social media, odds are good that you have been OWNED. Whether you are called out for a misspelling on your latest Facebook post, or you were proven wrong after sharing a “fact” or post from another site…you have probably been owned.

The word “owned” comes from the hacker world, and real “ownage” i

Last week I blogged about a strategy being nothing but a hypothesis. It quickly became one of my most popular blogs. In it I stated that the biggest single failure of a strategy is because management is trying to answer the wrong question.

This week I thought I’d give you a sample of 4 wrong questions which I’ve come across in my role as workshop facilitator to prompt you to answer the right question: - 

1. Medium-Size Office Equipment Supplier – This executive team had been trying to answer, “How do

https://www.newbusiness.network/effectiveness-of-a-business-plan-when-raising-capital/

Be sure to REGISTER on New Business Network to see how you can qualify for funding from Commonwealth Capital's Income Fund I & II.

In advance of our Conduct Risk Summit in London on the 13th September, we asked one of the speakers, Imatiaz Hussain; How is the work to improve conduct and culture impacting on financial services firms?

http://finance-edge.com/conductrisk/speaker-interview-imtiaz-hussain/

Interview of Chuck Brooks, Judge of GSN Homeland Security Awards, on Key Homeland Security, Cybersecurity, and Technology Issues for 2017

Government Security News (GSN): Chuck, Thank you again for judging our most recent and very successful awards event.

It was my real pleasure. Each year I am more and more impressed with the capabilities of the company submissions for best solutions. They are all top notch and at the innovative edge of security technologies. It also reassuring to review many of t

At lunch recently, I opened my fortune cookie and found this message inside: “Any journey must begin with a single step, and you can be the one to take it.” That simple message inspired me to write this blog.

Events taking place after the Trump administration withdrew from the Paris climate agreement have demonstrated there is more than one way to get things done.

A few mayors throughout the country individually decided to take action. Now, the movement has blossomed, and more than 200 mayors, sev

Even if you don’t realize it, your identity is all over the internet. Whether you posted to an internet forum in 1996 or you ever had a MySpace page, this information is still out there, and you have to protect it. Here are some simple and easy ways that you can protect your digital life:

1. Change Passwords – The first thing you should do is make sure you are regularly changing passwords. Make your passwords difficult to guess, and a mixture of letters, numbers, and symbols. Also, make sure that yo

Now Available: A web based interactive map in WPS! The map generates a complete overview of all permit requests, work permits and isolations (LOTO).  Go to https://www.workpermitsystem.com/functionalities/interactive-map for more information.

SANS has recently published its annual security awareness report (click on the link for a copy). Key is the concept of ‘security awareness’, which when combined with their Security Awareness Maturity Model provides a pathway to improved cyber security by managing the organizations cyber security culture.

Sound familiar? It should as that has been my message for years and is integral to my approach and courses. All the cyber security technology is worthless if the organizations cyber security cult

Here's Why Compliance Solutions Are Inadequate for Managing Regulatory Changes

Regulatory compliance is mandatory, but it’s not the end goal; it’s the minimum operating standard. For strong companies, compliance is a mere byproduct of performing well and managing uncertainty. Compliance solutions can also cause difficulties in the face of domestic political risk, which includes significant fluctuations in the regulatory environment.

The biggest differences between regulatory compliance and risk ma

I have facilitated countless workshops for executive teams. Sometimes we kick goals because the exec team have done their homework and really know their business and the challenges they face. They have done enough of the hard-smart work to know what they need to tackle and now they are working through the options and determining the best path forward.

Then there are the ones that have not done their homework. The formation of strategy appears based on hope or even wish rather than facts and consi

You might think it’s crazy to actually hire a hacker, but if you don’t have an ethical hacker on your security team, you could be playing a dangerous game.

Ethical hackers are called “white hat hackers” and are legal hackers, that help businesses find security problems in their networks. Developer and security teams, who build out codes, should have a white hat hacker on their side. This way, they will know from the start if the code is vulnerable. This is also known as “application security”.

How

Symantec recently released its latest Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR). If you are not familiar with this report it provides a global snapshot of the state of internet threats. It examines Targeted Attacks; Email: Malware, spam & phishing; Web attacks, toolkits, & exploiting vulnerabilities online; Cyber Crime and the underground economy; Ransomware: extorting businesses & consumers; New frontiers: Internet of Things, mobile, & cloud threats.

If you want to get an understanding of the threa

A lesson many businesses learn the hard way is that in today's ever-changing and complex regulatory and political environment operational risks appear to be increasingly exponentially. In order to take control of Operational Risk leaders of the company and risk managers need to have the answers to many questions. Can I profitably grow my business? How do I effectively monitor my outsourced activities? Am I paying enough attention to the risk I am taking on?

With every business having its own ri

Last week, news broke of a global ransomware attack that has struck individuals and companies around the world. In the wake of the attack, which has affected computers in 150 countries, many companies are wondering 1) if they’re going to be hit and 2) what they can do to protect themselves.

The WannaCry ransomware attack still isn’t over, and we’ll see over the coming weeks what the final numbers are. It’s not too late to improve preventative measures for the next wave, which will likely be smart