Risk Stories!

Today’s episode focuses on the legal side of cyberattacks and threats.  

 Robert Braun, an attorney who specializes in cybersecurity and privacy, talks with Michael about the risks involved when a breach happens.  Robert explains that even though more and more companies are becoming security and privacy aware, many still don’t understand the real threats involved with “bad” security.  

The decisions regarding privacy and security must be made at the highest levels of a business with assigned accountability to make sure the impact is felt and owned.   

Robert also discusses the importance of running simulations, and building a business form of muscle memory helping people function through panic.  Planning can result in acquiring better cyber insurance, avoiding embarrassment, and reducing the costs of potential litigation and downstream settlements.

Listen in to find out how to prepare for that call with your attorney.

Robert can be reached by cell phone at 310-785-5331 or by email at [email protected].

Today Michael speaks with Karen Donoghue, author of patents and books, mobile app developer and owner of the company HumanLogic.  Working with both startups and global 100 companies, Karen has built her career around design and the user experience as it relates to software and technology. 

Over the years, Karen has seen a shift in the software development industry where tight release cycles result in de-prioritizing the user experience, compromising the value delivered to end users while stressing development teams.

If you don’t understand your target audience, how can you develop something that solves their problem?  

The user experience is its own discipline, and Karen helps companies build a product that balances the needs of the business and the end users under the constraints of technology.  

Karen can be reached at www.humanlogic.com.

Local Haze can be downloaded free from the Apple App Store by clicking here.

© Copyright 2021 Puldy Resiliency Partners, LLC, All Rights Reserved

Dr. Stan Stahl is founder and leader of the non-profit organization Secure The Village.  

Stan talks with us about taking a grass roots approach to cybersecurity. He believes at the heart of information security is a conversation. Businesses must pull the right people together to talk about cybersecurity, truly have a program in place and then move that program forward!  

Stan also focuses on educating the residential and consumer markets on how we can reduce the risk that technology brings into our lives. 

Cybersecurity is serious business, it's broken, and cybercrime is at epidemic levels.  

Stan believes if we don’t get the word out to “we the people” on how to protect ourselves from cyber criminals everyone must realize freedom, democracy and liberty are at risk! Even though the government has a role in promoting national cyber resilience, it’s now time for a “cyber civil defense” approach.

Listen in as Stan explains how to join movement and how to, well, secure the village!  You can’t help but drink in his passion.

Stan can be reached at [email protected].

Read about the Cyberspace Solarium Commission

© Copyright 2021 Puldy Resiliency Partners, LLC, All Rights Reserved

In this episode, we talk with Steven Colby, an intellectual property attorney at Rimon Law, and owner of more than 15 patents.  Steven has a PhD in Analytical Chemistry and started his career as an engineer building instruments to test chemicals before jumping to the law track. 

During his early engineering and teaching career, he acquired his patent experience before going all in with a multi-decade career in IP law.

Steven describes himself as a “patent prosecutor” who writes the technical documentation necessary to decipher value, originality, and successfully file a patent.  He primarily works with early startups helping them create value in intellectual property, and helps companies build valuations by securing their “crown jewels.”  

Listen in as Steven walks through the patent ecosystem, and how strong IP can catapult a company into the big leagues. He also reviews the flip side, and covers some of the common mistakes that negatively impact a firm’s ability to achieve high valuations, market differentiation, and great exits.

Steven can be reached on LinkedIn or at Rimon Law at www.rimonlaw.com.

© Copyright 2021 Puldy Resiliency Partners, LLC, All Rights Reserved

Stevan Bernard, founder of Bernard Global, has spent his career protecting people, protecting businesses, and protecting reputations.  And through this experience, Stevan has seen and experienced crises and disasters that most of us have only read about.  Most publicly was during his tenure at Sony Pictures Entertainment where he was an Executive Vice President during the highly public cyberattack of 2014.

Every company is somewhere in their crisis planning journey.  At one end of the spectrum is the business completely unprepared for crisis;  at the other end is the firm who has created in-depth plans, crisis response processes, and most importantly, has tested those plans to demonstrate they work.  

Stevan outlines a number of different types of business threats experienced through his career,  and how he has strategically and tactically handled these situations.  He also provides an inside perspective of the North Korean cyberattack of Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Stevan can be reached at [email protected] and on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/stevan-bernard-cfe/

© Copyright 2021 by Puldy Resiliency Partners, LLC, All Rights Reserved

We are once again with Flick March, Director of Security and Resiliency for Europe, Middle East and Africa at the IBM spinoff company, Kindryl.

When we last spoke to Flick in December, the topic was ransomware and all the crazy exposures she sees with companies and how they manage IT risk.  

In the last six months, ransomware has become a worldwide epidemic, and unfortunately, the concern for business risk management is just as concerning.  For example, do you know what are your firm’s crown jewels?  Are you confident your key business processes are defined, what technology do you need at time of recovery and where are all your assets? 

If you have a forty-three terabyte database destroyed, and you can only restore 2 terabytes a day, plan to be down for at least 3 weeks!  And you probably need another week to make sure the data is correct.  Confused?

Join Flick as she shares another eye-popping round of stories about companies who are in deep trouble if the fickle finger of fate ever points in their direction!  Trust me, one night in the pub and Flick could make your eyes bleed!

© Copyright 2021 Puldy Resiliency Partners, LLC, All Rights Reserved

Blair Palese, co-founder and former CEO of 350.org Australia, has spent her entire career  protecting our planet. Her passion and commitment to saving the planet was once a unique voice while today Blair is one voice of millions around the globe fighting for climate justice.

It isn’t easy to problem-solve solutions around climate change.  There are big equity issues involved.  Blair walks us through some of the major changes in how the world looks at the environment, how we solve the global warming of our planet, and she discusses the need to adopt a concept called “Climate Risk Finance.”  

And, don’t miss her amazing story about how Greenpeace was only a few days away from acquiring a nuclear weapon from Russia!

In this episode, we spotlight one of our four critical business continuity scenarios: what happens when employees are unavailable?

Michelle Vincent, Senior Director of Marketing and Sales for MADI Corporation, spends her days, nights and weekends helping companies figure out how to keep their shops open if the time comes for employees to walk off the job. 

When employees strike, emotions run high, and anxieties and tensions are thick. One day everyone is sharing coffee, and the next day, tires could be slashed, and strikers are throwing themselves in front of vehicles.

And then there’s “after the strike.” In the worst of situations, life may never return to business as usual. 

Michelle takes us through the planning and execution around contingency staffing. Negotiating contracts, finding, transporting and training people, and securing facilities so replacement employees can safely keep a business functioning are all parts of the critical path. And, this is just the tip of the staffing iceberg.

  Michelle can be reached on LinkedIn and at MADI Corporation www.madicorp.com

Our Four Business Unavailable Scenarios Are:

1)     What happens when your location is unavailable?

2)     What happens when your people are unavailable?

3)     What happens when your IT is unavailable?

4)     What happens when there’s a regional outage and a combination of 1, 2 and 3 are unavailable?

© Copyright 2021 Puldy Resiliency Partners, LLC, All Rights Reserved

One of the biggest risks in business is owner dependency.  A business that can’t transition doesn’t hold a lot of value to a buyer. This is where Tom Bronson, CEO of Mastery Partners, saves the day.

Tom has bought and sold over 100 businesses, and today works with business owners to design and execute their ultimate transition strategy. The author of the book, “Maximize Business Value,” and host of the podcast of the same name, Tom brings a level of business wisdom to the table that only surfaces from decades of personal experiences. 

Eighty-three percent of all small businesses (under $100M in revenue) that come onto the market don’t find a buyer because they aren’t prepared to transition. Emotion can kill a deal when trying to sell to an experienced buyer, and like hiring a cold calculating attorney, Tom relays his experiences of the deals that work and those that fail.  While the stories are serious, there are some delightful surprises.

Tom can be found at www.masterypartners.com.

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Meet Mrs. Preparedness.   

Doniella McKoy is a rising star in the business continuity field.  Her experience in business continuity and risk management began with a business undergraduate degree coupled with a master’s degree in Emergency Management.  Previous experience working for FEMA and being a member of New York City’s Emergency Management Team only fueled her passion for managing and reducing both business and personal risk. 

Today, Doniella teaches Business Continuity & Crisis Management at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, solely runs the Business Continuity Program for Philadelphia’s Heath Partner’s Plan, a non-profit health plan providing services to 280,000 members, and she provides services to the homeless through her non-profit organization Gala Special Needs Foundation.  Sleeping is not part of Doniella’s playbook.

In this episode, Doniella shares some of her career experiences with an emphasis on the criticality of collaboration in managing risk.  

Link to Gala Special Needs Foundation