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An effective Crisis Management Plan should; detail every action and decision that needs to occur in each phase of an incident, from the time an incident occurs to the re-direction of personnel to alternate facilities, business recovery, and IT recovery to the return to “new” normal business operations. Have action plans that are role or team-based so each user knows what they are supposed to do. Automatically document all actions and status information that has occurred. Have real-time tracking of an incident by allowing Response / Recovery Teams to input whether each of their assigned tasks has been completed. The Incident Log should have a time-stamp for each activity and the associated user who performed the activity. Additional tasks and decisions should be able to be manually entered into the Incident Log, not every needed task can be thought of in advance. Contain detailed documentation such as operating procedures, policies, evacuation and security procedures, damage assessment forms, etc. that can be accessed immediately. Contain various call trees and vendor contact lists. Provide all the information needed to perform the post-event evaluation and lessons learned to enhance performance for future improvements and to provide compliance evidence. Lastly, be able to be used for exercising the plans.

Businesses deal with crises from time to time whether it’s an incident that barely warrants attention or a major event that makes headlines across the country. When something really bad happens, such as a natural disaster that forces a company to evacuate headquarters or a security breach that results in lost or stolen data, the media will come calling. How organizations deal with the blitz could affect the long-term impact of the crisis. An effective and constructive response might help put the company in a positive light during a tough time. An ineffective or antagonistic reaction might make a disastrous situation even worse. When it comes to dealing with the media, honesty really is the best policy. One of the most important things is to try to understand what the media is interested in. The media is interested in accurate, truthful information-something that will be of interest to their readership. Provide useful information. Going into a shell during a crisis isn’t wise, experts say. We hear people repeatedly say ‘no comment, that’s not going to make the incident go away nor the media. Having a plan in place for how to handle a crisis and the accompanying media coverage is better than dealing with these things on the fly.

The group project has been a little challenging. Having inconsistent communication has been the biggest issue. Some group members have yet to be active in our discussion thread and have ignored deadlines. Others have had to pick up the slack. Attacks by lone-wolf terrorists provide the most puzzling and unpredictable form of terrorism. Lone wolf terrorists are a nightmare for the counterterrorism organizations, police, and intelligence communities as they are extremely difficult to stop. Although lone-wolf attacks are hard to prevent, governments can do several things to make them less likely and to prepare for those that do occur. First, they should work to keep lone wolves isolated. Terrorists are far more likely to succeed if they can coordinate with others, especially if they have the help of an organized group, such as ISIS. Second, governments should build strong relationships between Muslim communities and law enforcement agencies. The friends, family, and neighbors of would-be terrorists are more likely than the security services to know if something is amiss, so governments must gain their trust. This will mean giving security officials the flexibility to intervene in ways that do not involve jail sentences, such as by allowing them to supervise individuals without arresting them. Third, governments should direct security services to monitor and infiltrate jihadist social media accounts, and encourage private companies to shut them down, to identify individual terrorists and disrupt their communications. Finally, and most important, governments should try to discredit the ideology embraced by lone wolves. Yet doing all these things would only reduce the lone-wolf threat, not end it. It is impossible to stop every violent individual from picking up a gun and shooting.