Anticipating Future Risks in the New World

Technology is taking us to the future at a speed that's faster than we previously imagined possible. Our ability to conjure a picture of what the world may seem like five to ten years down the track is improving, due to new strategic planning concepts and tools. However, it's our willingness to think about emerging, new classes of risk that's still a stumbling block for many small business planners. Some executives and business owners are"risk adverse", preferring to handle a company disruption as and when it happens. Yet it is through the subject of Risk Management which we could improve our capacity to survive in the cutthroat world of the contemporary market. Risk management, when employed as an integral part of business operations, can enhance the quality and reliability of technology and how it's used in real life.

Most risk assessments revolving around cyberspace occur after an event occurs. This is possibly because most executives are still grappling with what is and is not possible through the World Wide Web. The value, then, of Risk Management as a strategic instrument, becomes more evident as we push at the boundaries of trade, privacy and law.

Security Managers and purveyors of IT security tools are celebrating the arrival of new kinds of cyber exposures. A number of these exposures appear around digital preservation, IP address volatility, cyber harassment claims, privacy, hacker attacks, liability for theft of non-owned data and corruption or loss of intangible assets (for example, process design concept and other intellectual property). Executives and business owners wanting to keep on conducting business via the net, need to educate themselves concerning these exposures mean for their organization and their ability to conduct business, and their client's trust in using the internet for financial transactions.

The growing cyber world is helping create new businesses that may help in mitigating these risk areas. Opportunity knocks, but we just open the door if we recognise the caller. Wouldn't it be wonderful to expect these new technologies associated exposures, recognise the reduction when it calls in the door and be in a position to provide it a wonderful cup of tea?

We can start realising potential threat by asking,"What will the world look like ten years hence and how will technology be serving us?" Do not limit yourself to imagining just what your company will be like, as it's also essential to imagine what sort of clients we might be serving, what their needs may be and the way the want to communicate with us.

The integration of electronic and material technologies could give birth to exciting new potential for improvements in medicine, communication and education. Cyber villages and cyber nomads have started emerging and are expected to become more widespread in the new technological cyber reality - generating new business and marketing opportunities. The emerging sub-world supporting these improvements, called"Deep Place" from the Institute of the Future, is where it becomes vitally important that we concentrate our protective strategies. This is where policies, technology, data repositories and abilities behind the new world dwell. We have to expect:"What must we do so as to preserve and encourage this new ecology?"

Once we acknowledge and accept both the value and potential of our brand new culture and be willing to protect it, we'll discover that Future Risk Management is our friend and ally in the brave new world.