What You Don't Know Will Hurt You the Most
Identification and Assessment of Operational
   Business Risk
What is the greatest risk your company faces?

If I were to ask 10 people in your company the same question, would I get
the same answer?

Are you sure?   Are you REALLY sure?

How about the restaurant owner who thought that his greatest risk was
from contaminated food?   He was 150% sure that was his greatest risk
and he took very good steps to ensure that all his food was kept as
uncontaminated as possible.  He also paid a great amount of money to
insure his company against litigation from customers.

What was it that put him on the brink of insolvency?  Identity theft!

The wait staff had no idea the bus boy, innocently standing near the
register talking on his cell phone was using the built in camera to
photograph customers' credit cards when they were being swiped to pay
the bill.

The restaurant was sued, successfully, for not taking precautions to secure
the customers' non-public personal information which was in their
possession.
The restaurant owner didn't think about identity theft.  Why would he?  He didn't keep records of any customer
information.  But he did have that information in his possession and he had an obligation to safeguard that
information at all times.

One of the waiters thought about the safety of the customers' credit cards, not in terms of taking photos of them,
but in terms of someone picking them up and stealing them.  However, that waiter did not have a forum to voice
those thoughts and so they went unspoken until after the restaurant was in trouble.

Food for thought - Let Heather use her 30+ years of experience identifying and assessing the risks faced by
every business every day to help you understand how to identify risks, understand how much they may impact
you and how to think about protecting your business from those risks that will hurt you the most - the ones you
don't see coming!