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How Visa Safeguards Its Operations

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This month, Fast Company featured a great story on how Visa protects its data. As you may remember, a payment processor partner of Visa, Heartland Payment Systems, got the whole sector in trouble when hackers infiltrated its system and exposed the financial data of well over 100 million credit and debit cardholders. At the time, it was the largest data breach in history.

And given the sensitivity of the info, it was a wake-up call for the entire industry.

Not that most have lagged on data protection. As Visa’s global systems head Rick Knight states, its whole business is tied to protecting its operations. “Most people think of us as a financial institution, but the network is the brand. If it goes down, lives are on the line.”

The whole article, which is a “rare” look behind curtain of the credit card giant’s “top secret” security center, is worth reading. But what really caught my eye was the side piece on a few of the most quirky scenarios Visa has prepared for. It’s both fascinating and a great reminder that there are a lot disaster that your company could probably be planning for.

That Anthrax plan is genius.

1. Out-of-control backhoes!
Four conduits bring electricity into the building, so if a nearby backhoe takes out one, the Visa network will keep humming.

2. Electric surges!
Every pod has two rooms with uninterruptible power supplies to condition the power coming in and make sure there are no system-threatening surges.

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3. Total blackouts! 
Each pod has two rooms with 1,000 heavy-duty batteries each, enough to turn the pod into the world’s largest laptop computer for 30 minutes.

4. Natural disasters!
Each pod has two massive diesel generators, capable of generating 4 megawatts of power.

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They had to be heavily soundproofed– including 3-foot-wide mufflers–so they wouldn’t violate county noise regulations.

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5. Anthrax copycats!
Visa’s [operations center] has no mail room. Mail goes to a modular building nearby. That way, if a suspicious powder arrives, the mail room can just be airlifted away.

Climate Change Causes Some Extreme Weather Events: United Nations

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Climate change and the risk it poses to businesses and communities has been in the headlines this week, including one article by Reuters analyst Gerard Wynn that claims “rising temperatures are driving more frequent bouts of extreme weather,” some of which we saw this year. While Wynn and others (such as myself) are in agreement that climate change is behind some extreme weather events, others continue to staunchly deny such links.

In his article, Wynn references the fact that global carbon emissions rose by a record amount last year (6%), making it the biggest one-year jump in history and proving that even though the world economy may be in tatters, ozone-depleting gasses continue to be emitted at an alarming rate. And, according to statements issued today by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “It is virtually certain that increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes and decreases in cold extremes will occur in the 21st century on the global scale. It is likely that the frequency of heavy precipitation or the proportion of total rainfall from heavy falls will increase in the 21st century over many areas of the globe.”

The report, which the IPCC said was a scientific foundation for sound decisions on infrastructure, urban development, public health and insurance, also states that there are many options for decreasing risk, with the best options providing solutions across a wide range of possible levels of climate change.

But this is just the most recent of string of reports suggesting that human-induced climate change is linked to some severe weather events. For business to continue to prosper within the world economy, adopting a greener way of business is the only way to decrease the risk of future extreme weather events affecting organizations and society in general.

Though the Kyoto Protocol has striven to be a catalayst of global change, the United States (the world’s number two carbon emitter) is still in stubborn denial of the need to adopt such carbon-cutting measures. To that end, China, the world’s biggest carbon emitter, plans to nudge the U.S. towards more action at a South African summit later this month. Expectations, however, are low.

As the Associated Press reported today:

Top international climate scientists and disaster experts meeting in Africa had a sharp message Friday for the world’s political leaders: Get ready for more dangerous and “unprecedented extreme weather” caused by global warming.

Making preparations, they say, will save lives and money.

These experts fear that without preparedness, crazy weather extremes may overwhelm some locations, making some places unlivable.

As a climate deal is unlikely soon and emissions continue to grow, the future is grim.

 

The Top 10 Construction Risks

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More than 800 construction workers die and another 137,000 are seriously injured on the job each year in the United States, according to the Department of Labor. Its a tragic number and the worst part is that so many deaths and injuries are preventable. Aside from simply being deadly, however, the industry is imperiled by as many risks as any other industry.

Aon recently documented as much in its report on the state of risk management in construction. The broker surveyed industry professionals and received at least one encouraging result: overall preparedness for the threats identified as the top 10 risks has risen from 60% in 2009 to 67% in 2011.

What are those risks? These.

Aon points out one major change over the past two years.

Damage to reputation/brand has risen significantly in ranking from 11th in 2009 to third in 2011. This change is likely to be caused by the challenges that the industry is facing in maintaining a client base in an increasingly competitive environment. Where construction firms are working hard to replace diminished backlogs, the temptation to bid work at or below cost increases. With these practices, the risk of completing the job on time and on budget also rises. This can have a negative impact on reputation. This is not indicative of the entire sector, but the pressures on margin and the ability to remain viable as the economy continues to falter will have a negative impact.

By and large, preparedness has increased across the board. With one notable, major exception: capital availability/credit risk. That isn’t so surprising, however. The industry has been crippled by the housing collapse, so profits and, thus, cash holdings are going to be low.

Perhaps more troubling is the other risk that companies are now less prepared for than they were two years ago: third party liability. I’m not smart enough to deduce the reasoning for this drop-off, nor does Aon offer any analysis, so I’ll leave it to you to speculate. Not a positive trend obviously, though.

In an ideal world, this improvement would be coming solely because everyone is finally realizing just how wonderful risk management is. But theoretical value only has so much utility in changing behavior. Instead, the economy and pressure from customers and regulators have been the driving force.

Oddly, however, construction respondents say that “natural weather events” are less of a factor than other industries do. Perhaps this is because the construction industry is more experienced when it comes to disaster losses? And it has already addressed disaster preparedness and is now “past” catching up more so than other industries? They learned the lessons of Katrina and the 2004 hurricane season and they adjusted?

I don’t know. But it strikes me as odd that construction companies haven’t felt increased pressure of late to improve in this regard following the most devastating first-half disaster-year in history. 8% seems low. But, again, I guess the economic factors trump everything.

For those that still have more preparedness to do — hint, everyone —  the Department of Labor is here to help. To promote safety, it developed a series of safety videos.

The one below centers on not getting backed over by a giant truck. Don’t let that happen is, I believe, the takeaway message they’re going for.

Brad Pitt and Enterprise Risk Management

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My employer, the Risk and Insurance Management Society, today unveiled its webpage for the upcoming RIMS 2012 Annual Conference & Exhibition in Philadelphia. They brought the show to Philly a few years ago, and it was a great host city. I’m sure it will be again next April.

Moreover, they got a speaker I consider to be one of the most interesting in RIMS history: Billy Beane.

For those who don’t know, Beane is the general manager of the Oakland A’s baseball team. And because he was instrumental in revolutionizing the sport into a new era of statistical analysis, he was also the subject of this fall’s blockbuster movie Moneyball, in which he was played by Brad Pitt.

The gist of the flick is this: In the olden days, scouts, coaches and personnel execs watched players hit or pitch, scanned a few basic stats and decided whether or not they would sign them to million-dollar contracts. It was an simple and seemingly adequate, if inefficient, system. But Beane had a tiny payroll so felt he had to better allocate his resources to cut down on waste. His solution: employ better data and foster a new way of thinking throughout the ballclub.

And in last month’s issue of Risk Management, I wrote about how the success of this transformation is not so dissimilar to how enterprise risk management has begun to rise to prominence in the business world.

You can check out the full piece here, but here’s an excerpt.

Baseball had become big business. But Oakland was poor. So basing the team’s strategy solely on the gut-feel of scouts, as had been done traditionally, would be reckless. With the stakes so high, how could Beane not use this new mountain of data to inform decision making? Tens of millions of dollars were on the line — not to mention a World Series.

The stakes for businesses have been similarly raised. Companies must also embrace any concept that may improve strategy. ERM has been a quantum leap forward for risk quantification. There are now oceans of information to help companies avoid the pitfalls of risk.

Head over to RMmagazine.com to read the rest.