How a fragile world order changes our approach to privacy
In today’s threat environment, the interconnected nature of the world means that a cyber incident can trigger a physical response, or a seemingly localised incident can quickly become international.
Dual requirements
As the volatile situation in the Middle East continues, for example, organisations with corporate responsibilities in the region are fighting on two fronts – keeping their people and families safe alongside meeting business needs and continuing to trade and provide vital goods and services.
For heads of people-safety and security directors in a region hit by a natural disaster or man-made instability, many potentially life-saving decisions must be made.
Data strength
Technology, in the form of operational resilience platforms is obviously a lifeline in this scenario, dramatically speeding up the rate at which these decisions can be executed because of the accuracy of the information that the system holds. The resulting sitreps, however, are only going to be as good as the information held by the company or generated by the platform’s own tools, and this is where the situation has completely changed in recent years.
Place, people, protection
Even a decade ago, the data held on employees would relate to the place, not the people. Employees would work from various units, and their personal information would be held in, and focused around, their unit, or their regular commuting pattern. GPS began to change the landscape in terms of tracking employees, but resilience tools must now go beyond the travel itinerary and protect all the people all the time.
Real time visibility
As work becomes more mobile and routines less predictable, the Travel Risk Management systems that security teams were wont to consider the basis of their resilience toolkit for years are now found wanting due to a lack of up-to-date location information on people and assets – what is required, in an age of work mobility, is real time visibility of your people whether they are travelling or in situ.
Real time people-visibility requires a tapestry of data sources, creating layers that work together. The structural threads are places that people are associated with. The real time view of their access to those places through access control systems is woven alongside that, along with the travel data that moves them between these places and countries. Layered with that is the GPS data from their personal devices. Relying on all five together produces a powerful matrix of resilience to get the most accurate view possible.
Why people visibility equals safety
Put simply, you cannot protect your people if you don’t know where they are.
Emergency situations tend to shine a spotlight on data accuracy. The information required to account for an organisation’s employees is often siloed, out of date or in the wrong format. Security teams have long had to accept that pulling together people-data is a long and arduous task, with confusion often over whose task it is.
Knowing where your people are and how to contact them means you can broadcast updates with emergency mass notification software on their preferred channel (WhatsApp, Telegram, text etc.), identify people impacted by dynamic disruption and risks and notify them and coordinate people to take fast and decisive action.
Taking the situation in the Middle East as an example, when the conflict began most companies in the region immediately imposed a ‘work from home’ edict but then it is vital that employers know home addresses, contact details, who is at home and what their circumstances are.
In a crisis that requires intervention for people-safety, an incredible quantity of information needs to have been provided, processed and analysed, to create the best outcome. And that drawing together of data has to happen incredibly quickly; the recent events in the Middle East have highlighted that environments previously considered safe, such as Dubai, can be exposed to risk overnight and teams must be ready to react at a moment’s notice. Questions need to be asked around employees or their family members who may have medical needs that could be affected in the event of a blockade or mobility issues which would need to be taken into consideration in the event of an evacuation, for example. On a travel safety front, are employees and their families safer being moved to a more neutral location or will that move make them a target? Which employees are travelling to and from the area at that time?
AI – the additional layer
There is no doubt that AI will be central to delivering the method of processing all this information to assess an optimum outcome. It will be vital in bridging siloes and moving towards joint operations, but it should not be seen as a panacea. An all-or-nothing approach to implementing it, often by simply bolting it on as an additional layer to existing systems, won’t fix the situation. In fact, it could easily make things worse.
AI can help automate the workflows that matter most in a global safety operation. For this to be effective though, that data must be robust and accurate so that an organisation can begin to introduce AI in a way that complements its operational systems, thus laying the foundation for future success.
Triangle of trust
Successful Operational Resilience and Corporate Security is part of a ‘triangle of trust’, involving software, AI and crucially, people. In this dynamic, software provides precision, such as exact calculations and audit trails based on robust and accurate information, with strong data sets structured with robust and comprehensive guard rails. AI is the interpreter, there to recognise patterns and detect anomalies. But the all-important judgement calls, are and in my opinion always should be, made by humans. It is that trust that will encourage employees to share data they were previously possibly reluctant to hand over, as they will have faith in the process that could ultimately save their lives.
Understanding the ‘why’
By understanding exactly where the key data is held, and exactly which data the AI is using to inform its decisions, security leaders can have confidence in its interpretive abilities. From there, tasks that previously required manual effort across multiple systems can now be handled via an intuitive UI and agentic support, freeing teams to focus on strategy and the decision-making that will keep their people safe.
