A vibrant security culture: your secret weapon against crisis situations
Investing in a strong security culture is the best way to arm your company against internal and external threats. We live in a time when everything evolves at a rapid pace, including crime. It is therefore crucial that your company recognizes risks at an early stage and takes quick action in crisis situations. This involves everyone in the company.
What do you need to secure? How do you create awareness in your company? How do you detect potential risks?
The biggest challenges in society also affect the corporate world. Consider:
- Increased social unrest due to inflation, political conflicts, climate change ...
- Increased workload
- Digital transformation
- ...
Each new evolution introduces new risks. Companies need to be responsive and ensure that their risk assessments and crisis management plans are suited to current conditions.
This proactive security mindset is a joint responsibility of employees and employers. This is why building a vibrant security culture is so important. We share our key lessons.
Invest in both physical and digital security
Companies need to be secured, not only physically, but also digitally. Rapid digital developments require continuous monitoring of trends and innovations. Criminals also keep a close eye on these, especially anything in the field of artificial intelligence.
With AI technologies, anyone can forge documents, manipulate images and audio clips and even create viruses in an instant. In the coming year, the possibilities will increase exponentially.
In addition, the food industry must comply with the European NIS2 directive this year. Starting in October 2024, a set of cybersecurity rules will go into effect that food companies, as an "important entity," must be compliant with. Check with your IT responsible what you need to do to comply.
The Cyberfundamentals self-assessment tool and framework mapping are useful tools that can help with implementation.
Your employees are the first line of defense
The threat can just as easily come from within. Think of disgruntled (former) employees, corporate fraud or internal strikes and actions. Clear HR procedures make your company safer. Invest in your team's security mindset through training and exercises, as well as thorough screening procedures:
- Do background checks during the application process for integrity-sensitive positions (pre-employment screening)
- Ensure continuous monitoring of personal data (in-employment screening)
- When an employee leaves the company, it is best to conduct another post-employment screening.
Use security measures to identify risks
Activate a central hotline to quickly detect risks. Many companies are unaware of the extent of (potential) crime because incidents are not always reported. Thus, employees should also be able to report malpractices in a safe manner.
Based on internal notifications and new evolutions in the socio-economic and digital field, you can re-evaluate the risks each year and place them on a matrix. Depending on the score (impact x likelihood), new risks are then included in the crisis management plan. An action plan and accompanying crisis communication can then be developed.
Activate your central hotline at Food Security
Since December 17, 2023, all companies (with more than 50 employees) must have a hotline where employees, but also other stakeholders such as contractors, visitors, former employees, interns, customers and suppliers can report (suspected) abuses.
The new directive protects whistleblowers so that they cannot be legally prosecuted.
Our members can subscribe to Food Security’s hotline for free.
Want to learn more about behaviour change in the workplace, pre-in-post employment screening or physical security?
Discover our digital 'Crime & Security' sessions with experts on these topics (Thursday, March 28, 2024, 10am-11:30am, Thursday, June 6, 2024, 10am-11:30am and Tuesday, December 17, 2024, 8pm-11:30pm): link EN
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Register for the full series today and get a discount on each individual session.
Learning points
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