Disease Outbreak Security Resources

Closing/Reopening Facilities

• Returning to Work the ESRM Way
  As vaccination rates rise, organizations are seriously contemplating whether and how to return to physical workspaces. By leveraging ESRM principles, security leaders can help steer the conversation.
• Facility Reopening Guidance
  This document focuses on activities organizations can perform above and beyond normal actions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It also references fundamental practices that facility management should consider in resuming operations.
• Ready for Reentry?
  As organizations reopen their facilities, they must be aware of threats that may arise from a lack of human presence during shelter-at-home orders, such as the opportunity for Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks.
• Three Steps to Avoid Security Theater
  Not all risk mitigation measures are made equal. When managers deploy countermeasures without first understanding and addressing the company’s own specific risk posture, they are contributing to “security theater”—a concept that refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security.
• Webinar: Facilities Management: Reopening Concerns for COVID-19 Recovery
  In this webinar, presented jointly by ASIS International and Security Industry Association (SIA), panelists will discuss a risk-based approach to infectious disease response planning and propose a series of enhanced physical security measures that can assist organizations in protecting key areas of their facilities.
• How to Reopen Your Mail Centers
  In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, many companies shut down their offices and told people to work from home. As they begin to reopen, companies will face several major hurdles in their mail centers.
• Reopening Guidance for Museums and Cultural Properties (ASIS members only)
  This white paper, produced by the ASIS Cultural Properties Council Museum Committee, provides the cultural properties sector with some guidelines to consider as a part of their reopening strategies.
• Security’s Role when Buildings are Repurposed as Temporary Medical Facilities
  Convention centers have played an important role in regional pandemic response. Here are some lessons learned from those put into use so far.

Management and Leadership

• Making the Most of Mentorship
  COVID-19 wreaked havoc on global workforces. To retain and foster future leaders amid the tumult, personal connection through mentorship can provide support and grow both mentor and mentee.
• Trust Has Never Been More Important
  The consequences of a lack of trust can be significant, impacting employee productivity, engagement, and ultimately retention. It's a particularly relevant issue now, as many organizations consider whether to offer a hybrid workplace going forward.
• The Vaccine Is Here, Are You Ready?
  Organizations need to begin to plan now for the wider rollout of the vaccine and what policies and procedures they need to have in place.
• Leading from Afar: Remote Management Lessons from CSOs
  As organizations double down on remote work policies, security leaders shift their management, communication, and mentorship styles to foster team wellness and personal resilience.
• Monitoring Remote Workers
  Monitoring tools can track productivity and guard against security threats, but employers should weigh the benefits against the legal risks.
• During Remote Work, Security Training Brings Teams Together
  Security awareness training can fill two roles: educating the workforce and reinforcing company culture, especially during a crisis.
• Four Principles for Leadership for Security and Safety in the New Normal
  Extreme challenges present opportunities to do things better. Leaders are at a major inflection point, affording the chance to reroute connections and revise how they lead industries, endeavors, and teams—which has implications for safety and security.
• How to Protect Company Data when Laying Off Remote Workers
  Laying off employees is always painful, but having to do so when they are completely remote adds a new wrinkle: What should employers do to protect the company's data on laptops and other devices when letting remote workers go?
• Podcast: Leading During COVID-19: Team Resilience and Decision Fatigue
  Andre Simons and Terri Patterson of Control Risks join SM Highlights host Chuck Harold to discuss leadership practices and how to build team resilience during times of crisis—particularly during the current pandemic.

Business Resilience

• Guidance Document: Planning and Responding to a Health-Related Crisis (ASIS members only)
  This guidance document shares the findings of a think tank’s research into health-crisis response at a renowned private hospital, but its findings can be applied to hotels, resorts, and other institutions.
• Implementing Split Operations to Improve Resilience During a Disease Outbreak
  Employees are an organization’s most valuable asset. Businesses that implement robust and sustainable strategies to take care of their people during the COVID-19 pandemic will fare better than those that do no not.
• Video: Measuring Emergency Planning and Leadership Against the COVID-19 Pandemic
  In this Security Snapshot, Nicole McDargh, CPP, Regional Director, Physical Security, Health, Safety, and Building & Offices Services, Richemont Europe, shares how existing emergency management plans stacked up against COVID-19 and how reopening plans require flexibility, agility, and quick innovation.
• Conducting COVID-19 “In-Flight” Incident Reviews
  At this time, there is tremendous value in briefly pausing to reflect on the organization’s COVID-19 journey to date and conduct an “in-flight” incident review as a means of optimizing the approach going forward.
• Resetting the Business After the COVID-19 Pandemic
  Using an ESRM-based approach can help organizations re-emerge after facing major, pandemic-induced disruptions.
• Q&A: Agility and Planning for Multinational Pandemic Response
  For international business services company PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), managing business continuity and crisis response to the coronavirus pandemic has tested its international, regional and national capabilities. However, key steps—such as the early creation of a dedicated task force for information sharing—have driven a more streamlined, agile crisis response.
• Webinar: Leveraging Mass Notification to Boost Emergency Preparedness During a Pandemic
  In this webinar, Pat Scheckel from Singlewire Software, and Jason Sufka from CentraCare Health will discuss how organizations can leverage mass notification systems to prepare for and manage a wide range of events that can threaten you organization’s security.

Crime and Fraud

• Organized Crime Finds a Way to Thrive in the New Abnormal
  During a global pandemic, the threat of organized criminal activity evolved to continue to survive and take advantage of new business opportunities.
• Webinar: Organized Retail Crime and COVID-19: Trends, Explanations, and the Future
  In this webinar, presenters review the results from an industrywide survey on organized retail crime (ORC) during the COVID-19 pandemic and discuss actionable insights for controlling ORC as the industry adapts to changing conditions.
• COVID Effects Let Trafficking Flourish
  Government resources worldwide were diverted from human trafficking missions to combat the coronavirus pandemic, leaving gaps wide open for traffickers to target at-risk populations.
• Rethinking Retail
  As shopping habits evolve, are retailers ready to deal with shifting shrink and fraud trends both in-store and online?
• European Union Faces Pandemic-Induced Crime Wave
  As witnessed in the past, economic crises are fertile ground for the growth of organized crime in terms of its scope of activities and its influence,” according to a report from Europol.
• Hasty COVID-19 Responses Open Windows for Corruption
  The wide scale of the coronavirus pandemic, which has touched six continents, presents a wide stage for corruption, backroom deals, and fraud.
• How Cyber Criminals Use Coronavirus Scams to Target Victims
  Threat actors tend to be one-step ahead of corporate security. Scams that prey on fear and concern related to the coronavirus show how they’re taking advantage of the pandemic.
• Research Tests Face Masks’ Effect on Analytics Accuracy
  NIST researchers put facial recognition software to the test and found that face masks seriously stymie accuracy rates of pre-pandemic algorithms.
• Criminals Eye Stalled Supply Chains for Weak Links
  Global lockdowns forced supply chains to hit the brakes. Cargo thieves hit the gas.