Category Archives: Terrorism

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Understanding Insurance Coverage for Traveling Employees

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BOSTON—The odds of dying in a terrorist attack: 1 in 9.3 million. The odds of getting sick while traveling: 1 in 2. But both should concern companies sending their employees around the world for business, panelists Kathleen Ellis of CNA International, Erin Wilk of Facebook and Andrew Miller of International SOS said at a RIMS 2019 panel titled “Is Insurance Enough When Employees Travel?”

The answer to this question, the panel agreed, was emphatically “no.” But, as Ellis and Wilk noted, insurance coverage is an important part of the equation for many of the biggest things that do go wrong. Even though the risk of catastrophic incident is minor compared to seemingly mundane travel concerns like weather and petty theft, companies should still prepare for the worst in advance.

This is true whether employees are going to common destinations within the United States traditionally thought of as safe or to less familiar places. It is also true, Wilk said, whether the employee is an experienced traveler (who can be over-confident) or a novice (who can over-prepare and miss warning signs around them).

The panelists repeatedly stressed that companies should approach travel risk with protecting employees as their priority. Not only do companies have a “duty of care” (a legal responsibility to mitigate the risks traveling employees face), but they also need to be cognizant of the “standard of care” and “duty of loyalty.” Standard of care is the industry standard for employees’ travel risk protection, and companies’ obligation to meet that standard. Duty of loyalty is the employees’ responsibility to abide by the safety measures the company has put in place. As recently discussed in Risk Management, this is largely on the employee, but the panel noted that employers also have a critical role to play in creating a culture that enables and encourages their people to take the necessary steps to protect themselves while traveling. As Wilk said, “Policy is a piece of paper. Employee practice is what actually matters.”

When it comes to insurance, companies should make sure they are covered, but not over-covered. For example, Miller discussed cases in which companies’ benefits, HR and legal department have all purchased travel coverage without communicating their purchases to the other departments. Businesses may also be unfamiliar with the coverage they have and pay to remediate travel problems themselves when their insurance policies would actually cover those issues.

Key insurance options include:

  • Foreign voluntary workers compensation, which covers workers traveling on business in a way similar to traditional workers’ comp, paying for disease, or repatriation or evacuation
  • Business travel accidental death and dismemberment coverage, which works like life insurance and covers both work-related and non-work-related incidents, and is an option for covering employees’ spouses and dependents
  • Kidnap and ransom coverage, which provides pre-trip support, crisis management services during an incident, and reimburses for ransoms paid for kidnapping extortion, wrongful detention and hijacking
  • Expatriate medical, which is an option for employees who are traveling long-term, and
  • Defense base act coverage, which handles government contractors overseas at embassies and military bases

The panelists also emphasized that travel risk not only endangers employees’ well-being, but also the company’s bottom line. If an employee gets sick while traveling for business, for example, the company’s investment in the trip can be wasted. Additionally, traveling employees who feel unsafe or unprepared for the risks they are facing feel less loyal to their company, and can also be distracted, potentially derailing the important business they are traveling to conduct. The panel urged that pre-trip training and a thorough understanding of the company’s existing coverage are the best ways to mitigate these risks and help employees succeed when traveling for work.

RIMS Report: Active Shooter Preparedness For Your Organization

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More than 51 mass shootings have already been documented by GunViolenceArchive.org in 2019, many of which occurred in commercial settings and workplaces. It is clear that workplace shootings are occurring regularly in the United States. By customizing an active shooter plan that focuses on prevention, training, feedback and post-incident protocols, employees will be mentally and physically prepared to react to violent threats, according to a new RIMS Professional Report titled, “Active Shooter Preparedness for Your Organization.”

Authored by RIMS Business Content Writer Justin Smulison and featuring insight from workplace violence and business continuity experts, the report highlights opportunities for risk professionals and their organizations to identify warning signs of potential attacks, best practices in communication and pre-event training, as well as strategies to implement a coordinated effort that minimizes injuries, property damage and reduces uncertainties.

“Physical security measures are nothing more than deterrents,” said Steve Smith, founder and president of Guardian Defense and report contributor. “Every individual in the organization needs to know how to respond to an active threat in order to mitigate the situation. Risk professionals are well-positioned within their organizations to drive discussions, awareness and take a leading role in the development of a workplace violence prevention and response strategy.”

The report is currently available exclusively to RIMS members. To download the report, visit RIMS Risk Knowledge library at www.RIMS.org/RiskKnowledge. For more information about the Society and to learn about other RIMS publications, educational opportunities, conferences and resources, visit www.RIMS.org.

For more threat preparedness insight from Steve Smith, download his interview on RIMScast and read his Q&A about school preparedness on Risk Management Monitor.

Former NSA Director Talks Cybersecurity, Insurance at Advisen Conference

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NEW YORK—Advisen’s Cyber Risk Insights Conference, held during Cyber Week, featured risk management professionals and more than 18 panels and sessions on Oct. 25. The keynote was delivered by Adm.

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Michael S. Rogers, former Navy commander of U.S. Cyber Command and Director of the National Security Agency (NSA), under the administrations of  Presidents Obama and Trump. Rogers discussed rising cyber threats and offered advice to providers and consumers as they assess their cyber insurance policies.

“For insurers, you need to be prepared, because the list of actors is growing and the threat is growing,” Rogers said. “Don’t build on a strategy [where you believe] things are getting better.”

He also put a particular spotlight on the fact that there is no universally accepted guideline for cyber threats when considering acts of war. Cyber, he said, differs from traditional triggers because there’s typically no physical injury or loss of life.

“You have these wholly different international views, because nation-states in western democracies do not have ownership of the web,” he said. “They do not control their citizens and control the flow of data,” as opposed to countries with greater control of information.

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“Because you have these broad, polar views it’s been difficult at times, on an international level, to get a consensus on what a framework be like to set a cybersecurity standard,” which Rogers added, could help define how a cyber attack might be considered an act of warfare.

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He proposed an approach that could start nations on a path to a universally accepted guideline: “Can get we get a smaller subset of issues to coalesce around a core group of principles, start small, and build from there? I think we’ll have success that way.”

Rogers noted that he is a proponent and believes incentivization may be the key to keeping businesses safer and maintaining lower premiums, using features of the automotive industry as an example.

“Automatic brakes and safer vehicles, for example, were an incentive for the buyer and the seller,” he said. “Production and consumption were all incentivized to make better decisions. I don’t know if it will work [with cyber insurance]. It’s all about risk.”

Rogers’ insight dovetailed along with the new information from the eighth annual Advisen cyber survey that Zurich Insurance released at the opening of the conference.

The percentage of companies that purchase cyber insurance, either via stand-alone policies or endorsements, has increased 40 points since 2011. This year’s results show a 10% increase from 2017, the largest year-over-year increase since its inception.

“Cyberrisks continue to change and businesses continue to look for ways to protect themselves from those risks,” said Paul Horgan, head of North America Commercial Insurance for Zurich North America. “These survey results provide a critical snapshot of the attitudes, concerns and actions of risk managers. It is our responsibility to respond to their needs and concerns with innovative services and solutions.”

Survey results show the two most influential factors driving cyber insurance purchases in the past year:

  • regulatory changes such as the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and
  • business continuity risks such as the Dyn distributed denial of servicer (DDoS) attack, WannaCry and NotPetya events. These caused significant losses to businesses around the world, shutting down network systems and in many cases slowing or actually halting business operations.

The Advisen data reflects a stark contrast to the feedback from last year’s survey, which found that just 10% of respondents identified business interruption as the primary reason for purchasing cyber insurance and that purchase growth had gone stagnant after a steady six-year increase from 35% to 65%.

These factors were two of the top emerging cyberrisks identified by Risk Management magazine in early 2018.

Terror Attacks Hit Five-Year Worldwide Low

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There is some good news for international travelers: Terror attacks and casualties continue to decline worldwide. New information released by the U.S. State Department last week found that there has been a 23% drop in attacks from 2016 to 2017 and a 27.1% drop in victims killed in the same one-year period.

According to Statista, the number of incidents dropped to 8,584 and deaths to 18,753. Seventy percent of those fatalities were concentrated in five war-torn countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Syria.

Statista reported:

President Trump is doubling down on this tough stance, which is part of a wider pivot happening across the State Department [and] the Bureau moving away from a decades-long focus on fighting foreign extremist groups to concentrating on state adversaries.

The focus on Iran echoes sentiments from the State Department, which last week published a report warning of Iran’s illegal and destructive activities:

In addition to its support of proxies and terrorist groups abroad, Iran also harbors terrorists within its own borders, thereby facilitating their activities. Iran continues to allow Al Qaeda operatives to reside in Iran, where they have been able to move money and fighters to South Asia and Syria.