admin, Author at Edward Segal Communications

Author Archive

48% Of Employees At Surveyed Companies Were Asked By Hackers To Aid Ransomware Attacks

Commentary From Crisis Management Expert Edward Segal, author of Crisis Ahead: 101 Ways To Prepare for and Bounce Back From Disasters, Scandals, and Other Emergencies

Companies already have enough to worry about defending themselves against external cyberattacks. Now adding to that worry could be the possibility of internal threats.

A new study shows that 48% of employees at surveyed organizations have been approached directly for help in planning ransomware attacks against their companies. The number is even higher — 55%— for directors.

The survey results, “could indicate that cyber attackers are targeting employees that have lower salaries or a smaller vested interest in the company than their superiors,” according to Nicholas Brown, CEO of Hitachi ID, an identity management company. He said these workers, “are thus more likely to be enticed by the multi-million-dollar paycheck that can come from a ransomware attack.”

The study, conducted by Pulse on behalf of Hitachi ID, received responses from 100 IT security executives across North America at mid-sized and enterprise companies.

An Increased Internal Approach

Brown said that, “While we don’t currently have information about how the employees reacted, we are conducting a follow-up survey to dive deeper into these statistics.

“But we do know that 83% agree this internal approach to ransomware has increased since employees started working remotely—which makes sense since rapid digital transformation and cloud adoption has widened access.”

Executives Acutely Aware Of Pain Points

According to the survey, executives are acutely aware of these pain points and are working to educate employees about how these attacks may present themselves and what to do in that situation.

69% of executives reported that they have increased cyber education for employees in the past 12 months; 20% have not, but plan to in the next 12 months.
68% of executives said they were moderately confident in their current cybersecurity infrastructure to protect against attacks from the outside.

Contributing Factors

The rise in remote and hybrid work environments combined with digital transformation has opened organizations to wider access and a heightened risk of an internal attack, Hitachi said.

Of those solicited to assist in ransomware attacks, 83% say it has become more prominent since employees started working from home. “This further emphasize[s] the need for businesses to take a proactive security offense to verify identities and access to tighten cybersecurity,” according to the company.

Advice For Business Leaders

Lock Down Access

Brown recommended that, “Organizations need to think about that risk and how they’re protecting against threats from the inside by locking down access with principles of least privilege and zero trust, automatically detecting unusual behaviors and initiating automated mitigations.”

Reduce Threat Levels

Bryan Christ, senior sales engineer at Hitachi ID, observed that, “this survey indicates that organizations need to take a stronger, and more immediate, look at putting strategies in place to protect themselves from the inside, too.

“To help prevent breaches from internal and external actors, organizations need to adopt a Zero Trust strategy for their infrastructure. A Zero Trust philosophy to cybersecurity presupposes inevitable intrusion and therefore proactively safeguards data and access management from the inside out. This approach helps close gaps in an organizations’ network and mitigates potential risk,” he said.

Christ noted that, “Theft and abuse of credentials, especially powerful privileged ones, sit at the center of most breaches. Because credentials and privileges are power to cybercriminals, static and locally stored passwords are often a significant part of any breach.

“Utilizing multi-factor authentication (MFA) and single sign-on (SSO) will significantly reduce threat levels. Additionally, allowing users the minimum access necessary to perform a specific job or task (and nothing more) puts additional safeguards in place to protect organizations from cyberattackers.

“Smart password management and privileged protection is now imperative for every organization and will help lock down a company’s systems to defend against breaches before they happen,” he concluded.

###

Edward Segal is a crisis management expert, consultant and author of the award-winning Crisis Ahead: 101 Ways to Prepare For and Bounce Back from Disasters, Scandals and Other Emergencies (Nicholas Brealey). He is a Leadership Strategy Senior Contributor for Forbes.com where he covers crisis-related news, topics and issues. Read his recent articles at https://www.forbes.com/search/q=Edward%20segal#31ed72442

Facebook Name Change Is Example Of Marketing Tactic Used By Companies Under Fire

[Portions of the following blog originally appeared as a post on Forbes.com that Edward Segal wrote as a Leadership Strategy contributor. His other posts on Forbes.com can be read at https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsegal/2021/08/24/meet-americas-best-employers-by-state-2021/?sh=58b5067f4974]

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that the company has changed its name to Meta — Greek for “beyond” —is an example of a marketing tactic that has been used to divert attention from an organization that has received negative publicity and is confronting a crisis situation.

It’s doubtful, however, that the name change will do anything to help alleviate any of the crises or controversies now confronting the company.

Mark Bayer, president of Bayer Strategic Consulting, noted that, “A name change now—when Facebook is under intense scrutiny—reinforces the perception the company is trying to elude responsibility for its lengthening list of misdeeds. Even if disconnected from the current crisis, the name change will be seen as a clumsy PR move. It’s a gift for comedy writers everywhere.”

Zuckerberg said the name change was made to “reflect who we are and what we hope to build…Building our social media apps will always be an important focus for us. But right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future.

Click Here To Read The Full Article

Companies Are Bleeding Leadership Talent As Turnover Rate Increases

Companies are bleeding leadership talent, according to the results of a new study. HR respondents in a DDI survey conducted in September 2021 reported the turnover rate of corporate leaders had increased to an average of 18%, up from 14% in the midst of the Covid pandemic.

“That puts HR in a predicament,” according to DDI, a leadership consulting firm. “Just how badly do they need to retain existing leadership talent? Or can they depend on hiring from the exodus of leaders from other companies?”

DDI’s HR Leadership Insights Report is part of the Global Leadership Forecast series. The study examined how the changing landscape of the past year is shaping critical HR leadership challenges for 2022 and beyond. It included data from more than 15,000 leaders and 2,100 human resource professionals that was collected in 2020, and a survey of a subset of HR respondents conducted in September 2021.

Click Here To Read The Full Article

Colin Powell Leaves Many Leadership Lessons For Corporate Executives

Colin Powell, a retired four-star general, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and secretary of state who passed away today at age 84, leaves an important legacy of leadership that executives at companies can learn from and apply at their organizations.

In reporting his death today, The New York Times noted that, “By the time he retired from the military in 1993, Mr. Powell was one of the most popular public figures in America. In an interview with The New York Times in 2007, he analyzed himself: “Powell is a problem-solver. He was taught as a soldier to solve problems. So he has views, but he’s not an ideologue. He has passion, but he’s not a fanatic. He’s first and foremost a problem-solver.”

Not Without Critics

The Washington Post recalled that, “While hailed on his retirement from public service at the end of Bush’s first term as a figure of honor and distinction, Gen. Powell was also criticized for not pushing harder to block the Iraq War or quitting in protest.

Click Here to Read The Full Article

A New Way To Upskill: Novel Partnership Could Change How We Learn At Work

Case in point: The recently announced partnership between performance management software company Betterworks and remote learning provider Udemy for Business. It’s already bearing fruit in the form of a pilot project, a more powerful integrated learning and development platform.

By any measure, learning and development (also known as upskilling) is big business and important for business. According to one estimate, the market size of this global industry is more than $370 billion, with companies spending an average of $1,300 per employee each year on various continuing education activities.

Nearly 40% of respondents to an April survey by 451 Research S&P Global Market Intelligence say their organizations are planning to make their biggest HR investments in learning and development. Executives in particular are most interested in matching employees’ skills to business goals (55.6%), customizing learning opportunities (48.6%) and creating a library of courses to help close skills gaps (27.8%).

Click Here to Read The Full Article

Meet America’s Best Employers By State 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic has tested corporate America in unprecedented ways. And just when it seemed the crisis would subside, the light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be another oncoming train in the form of the Delta variant. At the same time, leaders have had to motivate talent and pursue profits amid a sensitive political landscape that spurred new levels of corporate activism.

It was against this backdrop that Forbes partnered with market research company Statista to compile our annual list of America’s Best Employers By State. The list is divided into 51 rankings—one for each of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia—and was compiled by surveying 80,000 Americans working for businesses with at least 500 employees. Surveys were conducted on a rolling basis from October 2020 to June 2021. Unlike Forbes’ annual lists of the best large and midsize employers, this ranking seeks to demonstrate how perceptions of companies differ from state to state based on local leadership and economies. We then ranked the top 3 to 101 companies in each state, depending on the size of its workforce.

Despite being among the hardest hit by the pandemic, employers in healthcare, education and retail dominated the rankings, accounting for 41% of the 2021 list, up from 38% last year. In retail, for example, sales plunged a record 16.4% in April 2020, while 2.1 million employees lost their jobs. Walmart, which was named a top employer in 27 states, bucked this trend: Ecommerce sales grew 74% during this time, propelled by consumer demand for grocery pickup and delivery and spurring the hiring of more than 235,000 store associates.

Despite its popularity among surveyed workers, the country’s largest private employer has not been immune to the talent challenges that have plagued its peers. Just last month, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer announced it would cover the cost of college tuition and books for its 1.5 million part- and full-time associates in an effort to attract and retain talent. (Target, another top employer, is doing the same.) Walmart also announced that it would buck the trend of recent years and close on Thanksgiving Day, as a thank you for employees’ hard work amid the pandemic.

The biggest challenge, of course, is keeping workers safe. After complaints about unsafe working conditions in the early days of the pandemic, the company has taken a variety of steps toward ensuring employees’ safety, including installing protective plexiglass barriers at registers and limiting the number of shoppers allowed in stores at any given time.

In July, Walmart also issued a mask mandate for all store employees in high-risk counties, and a vaccine requirement for all corporate staff and management-level employees. Those workers who aren’t required to get their shots have been incentivized to do so through cash bonuses and paid time off, including up to three days’ worth of leave in case they have adverse reactions to the vaccine. Now that Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine has full FDA approval, of course, that policy may change.

How Companies Can Partner With Governments To Distribute Covid Vaccine Efficiently And Effectively

The recent announcement by Washington Governor Jay Inslee that the state is partnering with Starbucks, Microsoft, Costco, and others to help distribute the Covid-19 vaccine highlights an important challenge—and potential solution—to deliver the vaccine in an effective, strategic, and timely manner.

This was underscored by the fact that, by the end of last December, the number of administered vaccines across the country was far short of the goal set by the Trump administration, according to Reuters.

Inslee told a news conference the state’s government-corporate partnership, “…would speed up the process by creating new vaccination sites, mobilizing thousands of workers, and making everyone 65 and over immediately eligible. This is designed to bring to bear all of our resources in the state of Washington to get the job done. This is a massive effort.”

What Your Company Can Do

A massive effort is certainly needed to end the pandemic and to meet President Biden’s goal of administering 100 million shots in the next 100 days.

In announcing the Biden administration’s national Covid-19 strategy, the White House said, “The federal government cannot solve this crisis alone. Full implementation of [the strategy] will require sustained, coordinated, and complementary efforts of the American people….including businesses; manufacturers critical to the supply chain; civic, religious and civil rights organizations; and unions.”

There are several ways companies can partner with local, state, and national government agencies.

First, business leaders should check with local or state government leaders and officials about the specific assistance they need now to administer the vaccination campaign. Then, based on those needs and priorities, the executives can determine how the capabilities, expertise, and knowledge of their organizations can help meet the vaccine campaign’s priorities.

For example, in Washington state, Starbucks will lend its expertise in moving people through lines quickly to help make the administration of vaccines more efficient, Microsoft will use their campus to help administer shots, and Costco will assist with the delivery of vaccines to pharmacies.

This is not the first time, of course, that members of the business community have helped the country address various aspects of the pandemic. In the early months of the coronavirus crisis, many companies converted their production facilities to make masks and shields, hand sanitizers, and ventilators.

Crucial Partnerships

There’s nothing new about corporations and government agencies working together to tackle national challenges and problems. What’s new this time is the magnitude of the emergency and that more Americans have died in the past year from Covid—400,000 and counting—than died in World War II.

“The public private partnership has been always crucial in any of these types of disaster/pandemic responses,” according to Dr. Daniel B. Fagbuyi, an emergency room physician and former Obama administration public health appointee. “It behooves every CEO of a large-scale company with the capabilities or resources to augment our pandemic response to partner with their local governments to expand the four key areas always needed in a disaster (the four “S”s): space, supplies, staff, and other stuff.”

But he said, “Companies should also consider being lenient with their employees that meet the requirements for vaccination to be able to give them an extra day or two off as some vaccinated people may have expected side effects and or other effects that may require monitoring or [their] being ‘out’ that day.”

New Level of Engagement

This unprecedented national public health emergency requires an unprecedented partnership between the federal government and corporate America.

“We’ve never needed to engage the public and private sectors at this level before,” observed Dr. Ashwini Zenooz, chief medical officer of Salesforce, which launched Work.com for Vaccines to help governments and healthcare organizations manage vaccine programs.

“Businesses and governments will need to join forces on a global scale to offer consistent, reliable and truthful messaging about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. It will require creativity to determine how we share information about the various Covid-19 vaccines across different communities and through channels that people trust,” she said.

The new Biden administration, “…is more open to changing the way the distribution of vaccines has been handled thus far, and a push on private businesses from the federal side would help to get private businesses in a better place,” according to Justin Beck, the founder and CEO of Contakt World, which provides contact tracing services.

He noted that, ”Private business has the power to move faster than the government but needs their guidance to best deploy resources.”

Follow This British Leader’s Example: When Necessary, Change Course In A Crisis

[The following blog originally appeared as a post on Forbes.com that Edward Segal wrote as a Leadership Strategy contributor. His other posts on Forbes.com can be read at https://www.forbes.com/search/?q=Edward%20Segal&sh=696c69c8279f]

In December, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reversed plans ease pandemic-related restrictions in London and southeast England over Christmas. Why the sudden change? Because Britain was now dealing with a mutation of Covid-19 that is dramatically more transmissible.

Johnson’s dramatic announcement underscored an important reality about responding to crisis situations: when circumstances change, you need to change your strategies and tactics accordingly.

For some business leaders, that may be easier said than done.

Barriers

There are several reasons why corporate executives won’t or can’t change course when needed in the middle of a crisis. They include red tape, internal politics, pride, longstanding policies, and the attitude that “Well, that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

Unfortunately, every minute you delay in adjusting to the new facts about a crisis situation could mean the crisis will continue or get worse. And when it comes to an international public health emergency such as Covid-19, delays put the health and lives of people at risk.

A Process For Pivoting In A Crisis

Just as a crisis should be managed in a careful and deliberate way, so should the steps in preparing to pivot in the crisis when the need arises.

Monitor

“By its very nature, a crisis situation is a fluid and dynamic one,” noted Laura Guitar, executive vice president of crisis communication and issue management at rbb Communications.

“It’s easy for executive decision makers to find themselves in an echo chamber, missing cues that would suggest contrary points of view. For this reason, it is absolutely critical that organizations in crisis are prepared to monitor and receive feedback on an ongoing basis in real time, with the expectation that the initial crisis response may need to be refined or even altered altogether,” she said.

The feedback process may include the creation of a monitoring dashboard, aggregating data from customer service, sales, operations, communications, etc, Guitar noted. “This allows efficacy of the crisis response to be understood through varied lenses and as a whole across the organization. For big, complicated [crisis] situations, it’s impossible to know everything in the early stages. Room should always be made for strategic evolutions based on data and information that emerges over time,” Guitar recommended.

Assess and Evaluate

Justin Beck is the founder and CEO of Contakt World which provides communication services to healthcare organizations. “Depending on the nature of a crisis and the type of company you run, [you] can assess whether your approach to managing it is working through customer behavior, social listening, staff morale, and/or investor sentiment” if your company is publicly traded, he said.

Joe Householder, senior vice president at Hill & Knowlton Strategies, said “…given all of the resources crisis communicators now have, it is incumbent on us and our clients/companies to be constantly evaluating and reevaluating our approach.

“With social media, the never ending news cycle, and countless research tools that are available to us, we are no longer shouting into the void. Feedback is instantaneous, so adjustments can and should be made instantaneously. At the same time, however, we cannot allow the data flow to force us to make knee jerk adjustments in panic mode. We have to apply judgement and even patience to make sure that any tactical or strategic adjustments don’t blow up in our client’s faces,” he noted.

Gayle Falkenthal, a veteran communication consultant who specializes in crisis communication, said, “Companies and organizations managing and responding to a crisis must seek and monitor feedback from all target audiences and stakeholders at every step of their response.“

Apply What You Learn

“How is the response being received? Is the messaging understood? Is the response mitigating the situation, or making it worse? This feedback should be assessed and applied to course corrections as the response progresses. Waiting until the ‘end’ of the crisis to assess how the response was received is a lost opportunity. If there’s a problem with the response, you need to fix it,” Falkenthal advised.

Don’t Wait

As Johnson demonstrated last week, it was important for the British government to change course in the coronavirus crisis as soon as there was sufficient reason to do so — just as it is in the business world.

“Companies should change the way they are managing a crisis the moment they realize what they are doing to fix or overcome it is wrong. There is no room for being stubborn in a crisis,” Beck said.

Boeing Faces New Challenges After FAA Removes Ban on 737 MAX

The recent decision by the Federal Aviation Administration to lift its ban on Boeing’s 737 MAX marks the end of one chapter of this crisis for the airplane manufacturer and the beginning of another. The company must now convince airlines that it is safe to return the planes to service, buy new ones, and overcome the fear people have in flying on them.

None of this is likely to be easy.

“The public will not accept a corporate statement that all is OK, [that] the planes are safe, and it is time to move on,” according to Jeffrey Davis of J. Davis Public Relations in Baltimore, Maryland.

Caroline Sapriel, managing partner of crisis management firm CS&A International, said “It will take time and this black mark on their history may never be completely erased.” She compared it to Exxon that “will forever be associated with the Exxon Valdez disaster, with BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and others who have failed to demonstrate values and leadership in times of crises.”

Ensuring Transparency

Transparency will be important is helping to restore public trust.

Boeing will need to explain the steps they are taking, and not just announce that the planes can fly again, Davis noted. “The company needs to demonstrate how they will ensure the safety procedures are in place, what they entail, and the literal steps they are taking. Show pilots in training classes and in flight simulators. Interview the CEO onboard the first flight. The public will want to see these steps in action.”

The airplane manufacturer should “share the facts, explain the process that they went through with the regulators, and offer details on what went into developing and installing the new technology and what makes it better,” Davis recommended.

Learning From Their Mistakes

It is possible for companies, like people, to learn from their mistakes. But what, if anything, has Boeing learned from this crisis, and will it be enough?

“Boeing was slow to apologize for the two fatal 737 Max crashes, an error in communications that cost the company both reputation and value. However, there are signs that Boeing has learned from its communications mistakes,” according to Laura Guitar, a partner at rbb Communications and leader of the agency’s Crisis Communications & Issue Management Division.

The company is apologizing more often and taking a more proactive approach with the media, which are good signs that lessons have been learned, she said. “However, recovery is going to require Boeing to do more than communicate better. Recovery is going to require Boeing to retool its culture as completely as it has the 737 Max.

“The corporate culture that supported installation of the MCAS without pilot awareness or training must be intentionally transformed. Better communication is not the key to Boeing’s recovery. A culture shift that puts long-term security above short-term expediency is tantamount to the company’s ultimate survival,” Guitar said.

How Your Company Can Fight The Never-Ending War Against Misinformation

[The following commentary originally appeared as a post on Forbes.com that Edward Segal wrote as a Leadership Strategy contributor. His other posts on Forbes.com can be read at https://www.forbes.com/search/?q=Edward%20Segal&sh=696c69c8279f]

Misinformation continues to grow at an alarming rate, along with its potential to infect corporations and organizations. No matter how it spreads — via fake news sites, traditional news organizations, or social media — companies that ignore and hope this crisis goes away may be putting their image, credibility, and reputation at risk.

Not The Real Thing

Coca-Cola has had first-hand experience with misinformation. In 2018 there was a false report that its Dasani brand of water was contaminated with parasites and that the Food and Drug Administration had shut down the company’s manufacturing facility and issued a major recall of the product.

In a statement, the Coca-Cola Company said that “The source of this false and inflammatory information about our brand is a hoax news website. There is no recall of Dasani being conducted in the U.S., so please confidently continue to enjoy Dasani bottled water.”

Equal Opportunity Threat

Marshall Van Alstyne, a professor of information systems at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, specializes in curbing the spread of misinformation.

“The bigger brands are more common targets because their name recognition make them better clickbait,” he said.

But don’t assume or hope your company has dodged the misinformation bullet just because it is not an obvious target. A target is a target.

“Private companies are increasingly vulnerable to misinformation campaigns and yet few, if any, have taken the necessary steps to protect their brands, their employees, and their bottom lines,” said Lisa Kaplan, founder and CEO of Alethea Group and former digital director for US Senator Angus King’s (I-Maine) 2018 re-election campaign. “Misinformation is a threat to all organizations' ability to communicate with their customers, stakeholders, and voters,” she said.

Prepare, Respond, Evaluate

And speaking of communication, why should you be content to stay in the dark about the falsehoods that may be circulating about your company? Left unchallenged or uncorrected, people might assume the falsehoods are really the truth.

“The reactive, piecemeal approaches we have seen lately will no longer cut it. To adequately prepare, companies need a comprehensive plan, including the capability to detect and mitigate disinformation before it takes hold. The C-Suite can’t keep crossing their fingers and hoping that they won’t be next,” Kaplan advised.

The actions companies take to address misinformation “should be the same as any communicator's crisis strategy planning,” said T. Garland Stansell, national chair of the Public Relations Society of America.

Organizations should “develop preplanned strategies, messaging, responses and safeguards. When/if an attack or issue occurs, having a plan in place will help ensure a thorough, strategic response. As with any communications plan, evaluation of the effectiveness should take place immediately after and adjustment made if needed to ensure improvement[s] for the future,” Stansell said.

Options

What steps you take to respond to misinformation may depend on where and how it surfaces, according to Rich Matta, CEO of Reputation Defender, an online reputation management firm. His list includes misleading or fake reviews, unfair or unsubstantiated news articles, rumors and conspiracy theories, and old or incomplete material that lack context. “Companies must be aware that any response can give the misinformation more ‘airtime’ or more legitimacy than it deserves.

“Many times the best response is to not respond at all, but rather to amplify the rate at which the company talks, publishes, and posts about everything else that it stands for. This creates a mass of truthful, accurate information that, when done correctly, pushes the misinformation off of the top page of Google and down to where very few people will ever see it,” Matta said.

Alternative Strategies

Companies that do not want to engage in hand-to-hand combat with misinformation may be content to wait it out and for internet platforms to do at least some of the fighting for them.

Dipayan Ghosh, co-director of the Digital Platforms & Democracy Project at Harvard University’s Harvard Kennedy School, says there are number of steps that platforms can take now. They include establishing and enforcing standards to make it clear what actions they will take about misinformation and hiring staff to moderate the content that is posted on their platforms. He points to Twitter’s decision last year to ban political advertising as “the best example of a company putting democracy over profits.”

In explaining their decision to prohibit the advertising, CEO Jack Dorsey said that, “Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes. All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.

“These challenges will affect ALL internet communication, not just political ads. Best to focus our efforts on the root problems, without the additional burden and complexity taking money brings. Trying to fix both means fixing neither well, and harms our credibility.”

Other have belatedly followed Twitter’s lead. Google and YouTube recently announced they’ve banned misinformation from their sites concerning Covid-19 and conspiracy theories about the coronavirus crisis.

Some crisis situations are more difficult and challenging to address than others. Unfortunately, the spread of the misinformation infection from the business world to the political world will not make things any easier for anybody.