There’s a saying that’s been bandied about the logistics world for some time now: information about freight shipments is almost more valuable than the freight itself.
That’s in part due to the just-in-time delivery nature for most goods these days, as well as due to growth in e-commerce; a sector where fast shipping is almost taken for granted.
As a result, information technology (IT) systems are playing an ever larger and ever more vital role in the freight world – indeed, for the entire business community. And for that very reason, if something goes wrong – a data breach or an IT systems crash – then big trouble results.
[As much big trouble as experienced in little China? Well … maybe not THAT much.]
Thus, at least according to the latest International Business Resiliency Survey conducted by risk management firm Marsh and the Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII), many businesses now consider cyber and IT-related risks to be the most likely form of “disaster” to occur and to have the greatest potential impact on their operations.
Based on a poll of nearly 200 C-suite executives and managers from large and medium-sized global corporations, there are three “big risks” when it comes to IT:
- Reputational damage from a sensitive data breach (impact 79%; likelihood of such a breach 79%)
- The failure in a main IT data center (59% and 77%)
- Online services going offline due to a cyberattack (58% and 77%)
Both CEOs and risk managers in the survey further identified IT system failure prevention (29%) as the most important area to invest in, with CEOs also highlighting intellectual property protection (25%).
In terms of preparedness, the majority of organizations polled also think they are better positioned to deal with traditional than non-traditional risks.
For example, respondents rated their company’s resilience as high for natural catastrophes and IT system failures (40% and 44% respectively) and low for political violence and an activist group attack on social media (both 32%).
Just goes to show that data continues to play a more and more critical role in the business world as a whole. Thus it cannot be an afterthought anymore in day-to-day freight dealings, either.
