Corporate India found wanting in security preparedness: Survey

Chennai, Jan 16 (PTI) Finding gaps in Corporate India's
security preparedness, a survey Friday said companies should
carry out stringent 'threat analysis' and adopt multi-layered
security approach to prevent their premises and personnel from
falling a prey to terror attacks.

Corporates should assume a more proactive role in
ensuring that at organisational level they were accountable
for security of their premises and personnel and do not become
victim of such attacks on account of negligence, the survey
conducted by KPMG said.

The survey found Corporate India was not prepared to cope
with a security incidence in case they were caught in a
terrorist attack or faced with an unconventional threat. Gaps
exist in current safety measures of most companies,
indicating a need to improve the security frame work.

According to the survey conducted on select companies in
the country from various sectors, majority of them with an
annual turnover of over USD 150 million, revealed that more
than half of the respondents (53 percent) did not conduct such
threat analysis.

The preparedness to threat was found to be drastically
low with only about a quarter (24 percent) of the respondents
having a comprehensive response plan while the rest either had
no or very generic security response plan, it said.

Over 58 percent of respondents' Business Continuity
Management plans, a critical process for organisations since
it helps them recover fastpost an occurrence of a disaster,
did not consider terror attacks.

When asked to rate security related aspects, background
verification of employees was deemed the most important aspect
followed by IT and perimeter security.

Due diligence of vendors/service providers followed by
training and perimeter security were identified as the weakest
areas within the organisational security.

According to respondents travel (airlines/airports),
hospitality and retail were more prone to terror attack as
compared to others.

The KPMG report also delves into money laundering and the
allied issue of terrorist financing. One of the important
features of terrorist financing was concealing the source and
usage of funds. To tackle the issue, the report suggested a
joint approach by the private and public sector.

In conclusion, the KPMG recommended conducting a threat
perception analysis for all locations in order to access the
exposure to the risk, considering terrorism as a major risk
when designing disaster management and BCM processes and
thorough background checks of all employees.

Besides, it also suggested training people for emergency
response at times of disasters, continuous engagement with
intelligence agencies to understand the alerts and react
appropriately and educating IT users with risk management
principles and counter-measures in case of a disaster or a
terrorist attack. PTI SNR
PMR