Proactive Threat Management

Using Threat Management and Intelligence to Assist Businesses in Times of Crises

Crisis management and threat management are essential tools for businesses to detect potential risks and vulnerabilities in their operations. These management strategies help organizations identify potential crises and proactively implement measures to mitigate them.

The importance of fast, reliable and efficient communication during a crisis cannot be overstated. Effective communication can reduce loss of life and damage, help businesses to continue their operations and prevent significant financial losses.

A well-crafted crisis management plan that incorporates threat intelligence is vital in reducing the impact of a crisis. By leveraging crisis management and threat management techniques, businesses can improve their resilience in the face of a crisis.

This article discusses crisis management and threat intelligence, the benefits and savings of having a crisis management plan and what technology is available to enhance the effectiveness of an organization’s crisis management plan.

What is a Crisis Management Plan and Threat Intelligence?

A crisis can be human-driven, such as an IT security breach, civil unrest or active shooter or an outside event, such as a tornado, power outage or electrical failure. When a crisis hits, businesses rely on a crisis management plan to mitigate the damage these dangerous situations have on their employees and assets.

Crisis management, also known as threat management, involves predicting potential threats that may occur and harm a business and devising effective plans to handle them to safeguard the organization from potential harm.

Crisis management planning starts with assembling a team of key stakeholders and planning for every possible negative vulnerability, situation and crisis. These scenarios can be internal events at the company, such as internet connection problems that lead to a crisis for an organization’s supply chain, or employee productivity and internal theft. Events occurring outside the enterprise’s control can also threaten an organization, such as a natural disaster, civil unrest or bank insolvency, such as the recent events with Silicon Valley and Signature Bank.

For more information on crisis management planning, view Regroup’s Business Continuity Checklist[SG1] .

Threat Intelligence

A crisis usually occurs unexpectedly with little or no warning. Still, by pairing the crisis management plan with threat intelligence, an organization can mitigate potential risks before they turn into a crisis.

Many know of threat intelligence from an IT perspective (cyber threat intelligence), but this does not address all the risks an enterprise might face. Using threat intelligence that considers all potential threats to an organization, a business can assess the likelihood and potential impact a threat can have on strategic and financial business goals and objectives.

Threat intelligence, sometimes called threat detection, is a way to become aware of potential risks and threats to your organization. For example, relevant information such as power utility status or weather warnings can help prepare organizations for an impending crisis.

Threat intelligence helps organizations stay ahead of those risks and maintain business continuity. Threat intelligence is a 24/7 function that supports day-to-day operations for organizations, which is important even before a crisis occurs.

Threat intelligence software receives information from thousands of sources worldwide, and trained professionals vet the data to ensure the threats are relevant to their clients. For example, TX360[SG2] looks at over 12 million events every month. The types of sources TX360 monitors include:

• News RSS feeds
• Official government agencies
• Police, fire and emergency communications
• Social media

Threat intelligence goes beyond traditional risk management approaches. Conventional risk management models fail to address the complexities of today’s ever-changing challenges. Risk management often centers on performing routine procedures and checks, resulting in a repetitive rather than a strategic approach. Although such an approach may be effective for managing known risks in a relatively stable environment, in reality, potential risks are rarely predictable.

Why is Crisis Management important?

Every day there are reports of companies grappling with crises. Unfortunately, smaller businesses rarely have a contingency plan in place. However, what if a crisis does emerge? Business owners must consider the potential impact on their employees, consumers, suppliers, the general public and the organization’s overall value.

Regardless of its size, any organization can fall prey to a crisis and will benefit by implementing a crisis management plan and threat intelligence. This is especially true as more employees work remotely, spreading the risk area a company needs to cover. By doing so, companies and their stakeholders can prepare for sudden and unfavorable developments.

There are several advantages to threat intelligence and vulnerability and crisis management planning, including:

• It helps identify and prevent a crisis before it takes place or gets out of control
• Assists managers in determining which problems need attention and which ones can wait
• Mitigating damages, keeping people safe, reducing financial losses and increasing business continuity.
• Improving a company’s ability to understand the signs of an impending crisis to take precautions earlier.

Crisis Management & Threat Intelligence savings

By failing to have a crisis management plan in place, organizations face financial uncertainty, damage to their assets and reputation, reduction in employee retention and more. Still, according to the Institute for Crisis Management[SG3], only about half of organizations globally have a crisis plan.

A few statistics demonstrating the impact crisis have on organization are::

• According to IBM, the United States experiences twice as many losses from cyber attacks than anywhere in the world. The average US data breach cost is $9.44 M, and healthcare had the highest average data breach cost of any industry.
• The 2022 floods cost businesses 3.1 million operating days.
• After a false rumor on WhatsApp, the shares in the UK’s Metro Bank fell 11%.

How Regroup helps businesses improve their crisis management plans

Communication is key in reducing negative outcomes and business disruptions during a crisis. It is proven that delaying responses causes confusion and time lost in mitigating the impact of a crisis. Timely, reliable information from threat intelligence and fast and effective communications are proven and critical elements to managing threats and crises. Communication partnered with threat intelligence also improves the efficiency and accuracy of a crisis management plan.

Fast and reliable communication during a crisis will:

• Reduce the likelihood of a situation escalating
• Mitigate loss of life and damages to property and assets
• Builds resiliency into your organization
• Avoids confusion, building community among staff

Going through these events will be much more challenging if you don’t have your technology and processes in place beforehand. A mass notification system is the number one way to inform people in an instant with the information they need. Regroup is a risk and communications managed service with a full suite of technology for threat intelligence, emergency alerts and real-time crisis management.

Regroup is a simple yet powerful solution to send alerts to your entire organization when emergencies happen and helps you run your daily operations. Regroup is a fully customizable, cloud-based system that is easy to set up and use. With only two clicks, you can reach people instantly during a crisis. In addition, the versatile API suite and robust integration capabilities make it easy to integrate Regroup with third-party systems.

Regroup’s Threat Intelligence Suite complements the mass alert system. The system monitors relevant risks in real-time and pulls intelligence from over 4,000 sources, including severe weather monitoring, financial market reporting, civil unrest and cyberattack trends.

However, communication only works if you know your messages were received and read. The alerts and messaging reach people where they are and can be monitored by administrators to ensure recipients receive important communications. In addition, geofencing allows messages to be sent to a particular area.

Mass notification and crisis management in action

The Sereno Group, a leading residential real estate brokerage in Silicon Valley and the Pacific Coastal Markets partnered with Regroup Mass Notification to improve emergency notification of critical events like severe weather, wildfires and other unexpected crises. Previously, the Sereno Group relied on email to alert its over 300 employees of emergency situations.

By partnering with Regroup for emergency notification, Sereno Group benefited from a wide array of features and tools for improved critical alerting at a cost-effective price. Signing with Regroup, Sereno Group improved the effectiveness of its crisis management plan by:

• Enabling them to reach on-the-go employees through Regroup’s AlertManager mobile app.
• Sending critical and potentially life-saving information directly to the staff so alerts could not be overlooked or ignored.
• Streamlining its emergency notification process and dramatically improving emergency communications between its nine offices and staff in the field.
• Improving employee response to push notifications compared to traditional email.

Summary

Every organization will confront a crisis or risks to its operations, including natural disasters, workplace violence, cyberattacks and more. As a result, it is the organization’s responsibility to create a threat or crisis management plan to minimize damages and safeguard its personnel.

Despite the various methods available to communicate across teams, technological advancements, such as a mass notification system and threat intelligence, have demonstrated they are the most efficient ways to reach people rapidly and effectively during a crisis. These systems distribute emergency alerts and information to those affected by a crisis, making it the most effective way to communicate with people based on their location and message delivery preferences.

Providing timely, reliable and relevant information using a mass notification system can reduce the likelihood of accidents, mitigate damages during crises and enhance business continuity. Ultimately, businesses prioritizing crisis management and threat management will be better equipped to navigate unforeseen circumstances and protect their employees, customers, assets and community.

For more information about how Regroup can improve business continuity for your organization, request a free demo of the system.