BY NOW EVERYONE KNOWS about that “The Missiles are Coming” alert was “accidental.”
Aside from inconvenience – and the attendant costs – no one was hurt.
But there are some lessons (hopefully) learned … lessons that may be applied in other places and for other activities.
I AM NOT ALONE in making two suggestions to prevent a recurrence of the “Hawaii mistake.” 1. Two people must authenticate the danger before an alert is sounded. (At least two authentications are required to launch an attack on another nation.)
2. If, as happened in Hawaii, the alert is unfounded and needs to be withdrawn, there must be a way to immediately cancel the alert and to disseminate the cancellation to everyone through all available media – tv, radio, text messages, emails, and voice alerts. There are “off the shelf” alerting programs that broadcast information on all media at the push of a button – assuming, of course, that the message to be distributed already is “in the can.”
Neither suggestion if “outside the box" and, I’m told, the two-person authentication already has been implemented.
The REAL questions are:
- 1. Why wasn’t the possibility of a false alert considered?
2. Why weren’t avoidance and mitigation measures already in place?
The answer, and there is one that covers both questions, is that no one involved an enterprise risk management practitioner (or even a business continuity planner) when North Korea's Kim started threatening the U.S.
Had an experienced planner/practitioner been involved, he or she, thinking “outside the proverbial box” would have recognized the potential for the “Hawaii mistake” and the whole mess could have been avoided or at least mitigated.
I have lived in areas where the local government sends out emails, voice and text messages, and posts alerts on electronic signboards over highways – think Amber alerts, toll information, or road work.
I also have reviewed and implemented multi-output alert systems, so I know from personal experience that they are economically available.
This is NOT “rocket science,” indeed it is little more than (a) using common sense and (b) sharing that common sense with management that, one hopes, will act positively on the information. (Management often hears what the practitioner recommends, but then fails to implement the recommendations. When will they ever learn?1
Sources
1. When will they ever learn lyrics: http://tinyurl.com/ybd3yfee
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment