28 August 2021

Never Forget: The Prescience of our Risks…

Historical facts and real time data will remain an empirical reminder of our mistakes in the past, of our “Lessons Learned”. Those who study the why and the how from only our past 20 years of history, will be able to adapt, can proactively improve outcomes and will over time increase our respective levels of resiliency.

“The 19 men who hijacked and crashed the four planes were all trained by al Qaeda. Three of the suspected pilots—Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah—were part of an al Qaeda cell based in Hamburg, Germany. All four pilots took flying lessons in the United States.

Fifteen of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt, and one from Lebanon. The oldest was 33; the rest were between 20 and 29. The group also included two sets of brothers: Wail and Waleed Al-Shehri on American Flight 11, and Nawaf and Salem Al-Hazmi on American Flight 77. The hijackers began entering the United States in January 2000 to advance the plot. All 19 were in the country by early July 2001.”

Yet are we simply repeating the same behavior and forgotten our lessons of the true data?

A proactive set of activities are continuously required to sense the unforeseen. We shall continue to devote our time, new resources and growing intelligence towards the heartbeat of our emotions.

The hope is, that we do not lose sight of the foundations and the continuous requirements for our Operational Risk Management.

The prescience of our risks, are based upon the past and the history already laid down before us. The continuous ability for you to become even more reliable, more consistent and to hedge against significant loss is in your own hands.

How might you become more resilient to the change events that still lie ahead of us:

Operational risk is defined as the risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed processes, people, and systems or from external events. These risks are further defined as follows:
* Process risk – breakdown in established processes, failure to follow processes or inadequate process mapping within business lines.
* People risk – management failure, organizational structure or other human failures, which may be exacerbated by poor training, inadequate controls, poor staffing resources, or other factors.
* Systems risk – disruption and outright system failures in both internal and outsourced operations.
* External event risk – natural disasters, terrorism, and vandalism.

The definition includes Legal risk, which is the risk of loss resulting from failure to comply with laws as well as prudent ethical standards and contractual obligations. It also includes the exposure to litigation from all aspects of an institution’s activities.

How might we gain the foresight required in an evolving physical and virtual environment with:

  • More Threats.
  • More Data.
  • More Speed.
  • More Decision Makers.
  • More Competition.

We shall “Never Forget”…