On 17 April 2018, a passenger on Southwest Airlines flight 1380 from New York to Dallas became the first person to live-stream commentary and video of an unfolding aviation crisis from inside the aircraft itself, using the airline’s on-board wi-fi service. By doing so, passenger Marty Martinez announced that the era of “Always On” crisis communication for the aviation industry had arrived.

The past few years have seen rapid political, regulatory and technological changes in business environments, and the rate of change is accelerating. To avoid bouncing back to the status quo, businesses increasingly need to have the right leadership and behaviours to adapt to these changes. Resilience First and EY conducted a study of over 50 UK resilience and security professionals across all industry sectors from both organisations’ member networks.

Crises Control, the award-winning mass notification platform designed for business continuity, has teamed up with Resilience First, the leading UK initiative to improve urban resilience for business communities, to launch a series of webinars and podcasts to raise awareness of resilience. The series of webinars and podcasts will be hosted by Crises Control and will feature subject matter experts from within the Resilience First network sharing their learning and expertise.

The terrible terrorist attacks that have taken place on Christian churches and hotels in Sri Lanka this week are a wake-up call to anyone who thought that the military defeat of ISIS on the ground in Syria heralded the end of the global terror threat from that particular organisation. The recent terror attacks on the Muslim community in Christchurch, New Zealand, were another wake-up call to those who thought that only ISIS provided a threat of this nature. The truth is that the threat from terrorist attacks was present in many locations around the globe long before ISIS was created and will continue to exist even when that organisation has faded from memory.

Managing Director of Crises Control, Shalen Sehgal, interviews John Deverell, CBE a former British Army senior officer who specialises in advising companies and governments on governance, risk and crisis management.

This briefing and exercise, kindly hosted by the American International Church, was designed to help attendees think about their own resilience as part of the local area, and what support their own organisation might need or could be able to give. Around 25 people attended.

Crises always put a company under intense scrutiny, whether from internal stakeholders such as employees and investors or external stakeholders such as suppliers, customers, regulators and the media. This last group, the media, might have the least invested in the company themselves, but they can still wield an enormous power to damage the reputation of a company long term and perhaps even drive it into bankruptcy.

Crises Control Managing Director, Shalen Sehgal, has written an article for the March 2019 issue of leading publication Housing Technology Magazine on how the social housing sector is at significant and growing risk of disruptive incidents that can impact on housing providers and their tenants.

Russell has been involved in the Business Continuity, Security & Risk Management Sectors for 20 years. He worked on the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and is an international advisor on standards, including for ISO, ASIS and the BSI. He is the Chairman of the BSI Risk Management Committee.Russell has been involved in the Business Continuity, Security & Risk Management Sectors for 20 years. He worked on the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and is an international advisor on standards, including for ISO, ASIS and the BSI. He is the Chairman of the BSI Risk Management Committee.

The NHS has apparently been told by health ministers to stop using pagers for emergency communications by 2021, in order to save money. The NHS is possibly the biggest remaining buyer of this archaic technology in the world, with 130,000 pagers still in use, which is astonishingly 10% of the entire global usage.

In this second episode of our new video blog series, the Managing Director of Crises Control, Shalen Sehgal, interviews former Deputy Mayor of London and Chair of the 7/7 Review Committee, Richard Barnes, about the responsibility of public and private bodies for building community resilience.

If you don’t work in the blue light services, you will probably never have heard of the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Programme (JESIP).The guidance has been developed by police, fire and ambulance service colleagues in the UK following several public enquirieswhich said joint working between the three emergency services would enhance the collectiveability to save lives and reduce harm.

Research carried out by Crises Control and the Continuity Forum has revealed that while almost all SMEs agree business continuity planning is a vital protection for their business a majority are not in fact ready to effectively handle a business disruption incident.

The history of mass communication stretches from prehistoric forms of art and writing, through basic printing technology from around 800AD; the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press in 1455; the first weekly printed newspaper in Antwerp in 1605; the invention of radio by Marconi in 1895; television by John Logie Baird in 1925; and finally, to the internet (the World Wide Web) by Tim Berners Lee in 1990.

Every business needs to communicate reliably and effectively to be successful and understand who has received the message and who has not. Each communication may have a wide range of different audiences. Core audiences will include employees, suppliers, customers and investors. Further audiences may include regulators, residents, students and site visitors, amongst others.

In this first episode of our new video blog series, the Managing Director of Crises Control, Shalen Sehgal, interviews crisis management expert John Deverall about the benefits of having a business continuity plan in place.

What has gone unnoticed in the recent story about the disgraceful burning of a Grenfell Tower effigy on a bonfire in South East London is that this event was almost certainly never intended to be made public. One of the people involved filmed the event on their smartphone and then posted it to what was very likely meant to be a private WhatsApp group. Someone in the private group then forwarded the video onto at least one other person outside of the group and any control over distribution was lost from that point onwards. The video went viral and the fury of the country descended upon them. No sympathy from me on this point. The massive outpouring of public anger that led to their subsequent arrest by the police, was the least that they deserved.

Crises Control, the award-winning mass notification platform designed for business continuity, has teamed up with the Continuity Forum, the leading business continuity advice and research organisation in the UK, to research the SME market.