THE RISK SENTINELS

The pandemic and lockdown have put the biggest strain ever on chief risk officers. This is the time that their systems were put to test as were they themselves. Largely, the financial community has proven itself to be capable and agile, as seen from the 16 respondents in this cover story. The CROs have also taken the opportunity to expand their knowledge frontiers to prepare for future risks. Kudos to The Sentinels.

Part 1

The WFh Risk Pyramid

Question: Risks associated with WFH – how has been the actual experience vis-à-vis the expectations?

Over a year into the pandemic, covid has had a devastating economic, social and health impact across the globe. Hundreds of thousands of lives have already been lost and the end of this pandemic is still not in sight. On the corporate side, there are 2 pictures: either a corporate has gone bust (or nearly so), or the corporate is in good shape. Judging from the responses, all the 16 organizations that participated in this cover story seem to be in good shape.

Our respondents have broadly classified WFH related risks into 5 categories: (i) business risks, (ii) cybersecurity risks, (iii) people risks, (iv) operations risks and (v) other risks. Here are their edited responses.

ABHILASH BALAN, CISO AT DIGIT INSURANCE

Work from home often raises questions on the security of the organization and the increased risk of a breach. However, we were able to manage these risks using cybersecurity protocols and imparting right information to our teams. Digit Insurance took 6 key security initiatives: (i) Implemented secure VPN tunnels (ii) Strengthened the advanced

threat protection systems (iii) Audited system & application rights (iv) Used the best AV solution (v) Managed EDR solution for each system in our network, and (vi) Implemented a DLP agent on each laptop to take care of the company’s data on each system.

ANIL PINAPALA, CEO AT VIVIFIINDIA FINANCE