Is plausible deniability dead?
One strategy of corporate counsel that has been shown in various media reports is “plausible deniability”. Ethics rules for attorneys may require them to reveal compromising facts to the opposing side. If you can show you didn’t know that the plant could blow up and it blew up; then it may not be your fault. Nice legal term called ‘legal causation’. No facts to prove the case. Sorry victims, it was an act of God, an accident.
The quality of your life depends on the water you drink, the air you breathe, the roads you drive, and the power you have. Period.
In other words, the quality of your life depends on your access and availability of electricity, water, roads, bridges, and power or in other words your infrastructure.
COSO released a new thought paper in October, authored by representatives from Deloitte, titled Risk Assessment in Practice. [Download the paper here.]
This could be a game changer for ERM assessments. The thought paper [that] “provides the latest thinking on risk assessment approaches and techniques that have emerged as the most useful and sustainable for decision-making.”
IMPROVING CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE CYBER SECURITY
US President Barack Obama signed the long awaited Cybersecurity Executive Order on Feb. 12, 2013. The full text of the Executive Order can be found on the White House website here:
For months, the Obama administration had been floating the issuing of an executive order on cybersecurity. With the failure of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) to get traction in Congress they have delivered – the “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity” Executive Order was signed on February 12. [For details of CISPA, see this link:
http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/files/documents/HR624.pdf]
The focus of the Order is protection of Critical Infrastructure. The Secretary of Homeland Security and the Attorney General, in coordination with the Director of National Intelligence are the responsible officials.
This article describes the basic sections of the Order and the timeline that is laid out for implementation.
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