Author: Edited by David Hillson
ISBN No: 0 580 43777 9
Review date: 10/03/2026
No of pages: 394
Publisher: BSI
Year of publication:
Brief:
Fraud, terrorism and business continuity are among risks covered in a British Standards survey of risk management.
A chapter explicitly on security management and risk would have been welcome in The Risk Management Universe. A Guided Tour. As consultancies like Control Risks Group argue, knowing the risks to doing business is key to doing profitable business in dangerous places, while being alive to the dangers from crime, corruption, riots, and so on. From that viewpoint, risk is not tick-box, hard-hat-wearing health and safety, but a way to secure, in a risky world, an environment to do business in. Security is overlooked, maybe, by risk people because, as Jon Finch, author of the chapter on fraud, writes, fraud risk management is โthe poor relation in so many UK companiesโ.
Fraud
Jon Finch is the retired former group business risk manager for ICL-Fujitsu Services. He covers much ground in 28 pages. What security practitioners can take from this chapter and the whole book is that risk is a process – you draw up a plan, and have a cycle of audits and reviews. Finch gives the case of a fraud between staff in a manufacturer and supplier. As so often happens, suspects were seldom absent from work and stock checks were lacking. External auditors went in one Easter; and the companyโs security team investigated the lifestyle of suspects. Of interest that the fraud included a husband and wife who worked for the two firms; a clerk; and an IT person (never found).
Counter-terror
A chapter on counter-terrorism is by Richard Flynn, of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office, last in these pages in December 2005 as a speaker at the British Retail Consortium crime conference. As at that event, he quotes senior former Met Police man Sir David Veness that good crime prevention is good counter-terrorism. That said, Flynn calls for less โsilo workingโ and a more holistic approach, with security, business continuity and risk staff working together. And not only in your own organisation; what of your suppliers – how will your site manage if an IT or other supplier is out of action because of a bomb (and then a cordon?).
Other chapters
Of the 15 chapters, others worth a look cover reputational risk, and business continuity; for corporate heads of security, one on corporate governance; and the final, summing up, pages by editor Dr David Hillson, who points out that risk is related to uncertainty, and as so much about life is certain, there is a school of thought that risk will come to encompass everything. If you want to be in on the act, this is a good, though somewhat dear, place to begin.
