Training

BCI World 2017: Terrorism scenario

by Mark Rowe

If you are running an exercise, and you choose a terrorism scenario, you want it to be credible. But what?

That was the question posed by Richard Bond of the engineering consultancy Arup, speaking to the BCI World conference in west London earlier this month. “Because the last thing you want is someone saying, ‘that isn’t the way it will happen’, or ‘it couldn’t happen’.”

As part of the resilience and security risk team at Arup, Richard assesses risk such as terror and crime. He began by asking: why spend time preparing for terrorism-related business interruption; surely it’s better to prepare for power outage or flood, something more likely? It depends, he added, on the nature of your business, and location. A terrorism disruption to your business is maybe less likely, but ‘it’s certainly not inconceivable’, even if indirectly.

He set out how business continuity (BC) and other managers – whoever is given the responsibility – can go about collecting intelligence for a threat assessment; and showed how Arup does it. He made the case for a credible scenario as the basis for a BC exercise, to test some objective – decision-making, or information exchange or crisis communications – that you should stick to over the exercise, with a set start and finish time.

He summed up that a terrorism scenario for a business continuity exercise can be a valuable step in developing resilience in the event of an attack. Terrorist threats are not static; but can be monitored. And that scenario should be as relevant to your business as possible; based on a threat risk assessment.

Replying to questions from the floor, he began by taking the point that terrorists too do their own intelligence gathering; and there are some details about your assets that you want to protect. There are techniques, he added, to do at least some monitoring of the threat environment to you and your business, that can be used to inform what you decide to do next.

Another question from the floor recalled the conference opening speaker, the former Met Police Commissioner Sir Bernard – now Lord – Hogan-Howe, who spoke about being frank in de-briefs. As the questioner said, that can and does happen in the police and military; but it can be harder to do in a business, to tell some senior manager (senior to you) that their performance in the test was not great! Richard brought in colleague Nick Goldby, who suggested an exercise also have a ‘facilitator’, perhaps with police experience, who can be critical ‘in a constructive way’. It was acknowledged that it can be difficult for a manager running an exercise to stand in front of senior managers who are expecting to be told ‘well done’.

Another question covered being sensitive to the workforce when making a scenario; do you want everyone to feel more reassured after an exercise; might you only make some more fearful? Again, Richard Bond acknowledged that was a good question. He suggested communicating with staff in an objective way. Determine what you want staff to do and why. Nick Goldby added: “The only reason you are doing the exercise is to reassure the organisation,” for example that you have a plan, and have tested it, to show that the organisation is committed to staff welfare in any disruption, not just terrorism.

Pictured: Borough Market, site of the London Bridge terror attack of June 2017.

Some background: Arup as an engineering firm does risk work on for example Blast Effects on Buildings. For more on its security and resilience advice to clients visit https://www.arup.com/expertise/services/planning/resilience-security-and-risk.

Related News

  • Training

    Sword of Honour awards

    by Mark Rowe

    The British Safety Council has launched its 2016 Sword of Honour and Globe of Honour awards. The BSC says that they’re designed…

  • Training

    Hikvision webinars

    by Mark Rowe

    Hikvision, with Tavcom Training, the Hampshire-based security systems training company, has recently launched webinar training for Hikvision’s video products. The online webinars…

Newsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay on top of security news and events.

© 2024 Professional Security Magazine. All rights reserved.

Website by MSEC Marketing