Why Business and fear don’t mix

Fear is now a market, and protecting a frightened corporate sector is a profit making activity. Companies are afraid of the unknown, that’s why they increasingly resort to risk assessment agencies. These are in charge of imagining worse case scenarios, they provide operational assistance and crisis management when a major incident emerges. They have hundreds of specialists all over the world, to collect information on the ground. Their staff often includes former members of intelligence services, in other words former spies.

The painters of worse case scenarios probably earn more than week-end painters these days. The French risk assessment agency Geos for instance was launched nine years ago. It now has 14 branches in eleven countries, clients all over the world, and a twenty million euro turnover. Michael Hunt is associate director at Geos.

“We live in a topsy-turvy world, there is a lot of crisis chatter out there, companies are increasingly worried about the risks they face, the terror risk, crime, political instability, social upheaval in certain countries, labour unrest, but I would say mostly political, terror or crime related.”

Why do more and more companies feel the need to protect themselves, most of the risks you have just outlined are not new?

“Because they have weight up the price of what it costs if they don’t take them into account. 9-11 you had whole companies, whole data banks in companies disappearing.”

Imagine a company without memory! Geos offers a wide range of back up solutions, it also protects companies from industrial espionnage.

“We provide very comprehensive debugging services, especially for business seminars, conferences, meeting rooms, you know a lot of trade secrets are lost, there are wiretap scandals that have just emerged in Italy, and Greece, that’s why companies come to us, they want to be sure that their business discussions and high-level negotiations are sure, that’s a pretty legitimate concern to know that a high-level negotiation is going to stay within the four walls, we can provide the service that ensures that.”

Risk assessment agencies have research advisory bureaux in charge of anticipating ……everything. For instance they have concocted a hundred different scenarios, for the future Franco Italian Lyon Turin train service. Michael Hunt from Geos.

“We have worked on it for over two and a half years, the idea is to create risk scenarios and impact assessments, over a hundred of them, anything from terrorist attack to fire security, what are the responses, how do you avoid that problem, what is the prevention methodologies that you implement to avoid such problems.”

You have anticipated more than a hundred attacks?

“Yes, and then simulated converging attacks, like simultaneous attacks going on at the same time, so we simulated that and then came up with solutions.”

Does it ever get ridiculous though?

“I don’t think you can ever underestimate human ingenuity, so no, it never got ridiculous, it got very complex, but our job is to make recommendations.”

Do you think we live in a world of fear ?

“I think fear diminishes us, I think we have to combat our fear, I don’t like to think we live in a world of fear, I think we live in a world of unknown possibilities.”

Business and unknown possibilities do not mix?

“So it’s our job to provide businesses with solutions to those unknown possibilities.”

Risk agencies are also careful to protect …themselves. When I asked the press attaché at Geos for his direct phone number, he said “I can’t give it to you…for security reasons!”

Some risk agencies choose to specialise in one specific domain, for instance terrorism. Anne Giudicelli is a former journalist. She has also worked for the French foreign affairs ministry, where she was in charge of the Middle East. Anne Giudicelli has a lot of expertise in the field of terrorism, and therefore helps companies in Europe and in the Middle East, deal with the terror threat. Her organisation is called Terrorisc. She explains that there are different ways of gathering essential information.

“I have different sources, I have human sources and clandestine sources, members of an ideology are using the web to communicate and to spread information through these specific sources. You need a log-in, if you want to enter and you are not known by the members you can not get that information so you have to be known by them, so you join a couple of Jihadi websites and take part in forums, and you can communicate with them and get information and have a real view of what is going on in this group of people. That helps you to have a clear view of the situation in this area.”

Risk assessment agencies often hire retired intelligence agents. Commentators say that state intelligence services, are not pleased to see retired agents embark on such careers. They complain that these agents had access to classified information in the name of homeland security, selling that kind of information to serve the interests of the corporate sector, they say, is unethical. Paris, Nick Champeaux, RFI.

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