India inc is least prepared to handle the growing threats of terrorism with less than a quarter of them having a comprehensive response plan in place to deal with such a situation, a KPMG report says.
According to a survey by the global consultancy firm KPMG of the leading corporate houses of India to assess the level of preparedness to deal with threats of terrorism, 53 per cent of the respondents said they did not conduct such threat analysis.
"The preparedness to threats was found to be drastically low as only about 24 per cent of the respondents had a comprehensive response plan and rest of the respondents either had no or very generic security response plan for their organisation," the survey said.
Only one fifth of the survey participants had conducted any threat analysis, which shows that corporate India is not prepared to cope with a security incidence in case they are caught in a terrorist attacks or are faced with an unconventional threat.
Also, only 39 per cent of the respondents have insurance cover for terrorism related incidents.
The report pointed out that "organisations across the globe are obliged to provide for a safe working place, therefore, it is imperative that corporate draw effective emergency plans to ensure proper safeguards for their employees, assets and business," KPMG India's Forensic Services head Deepanker Sanwalka said.
According to the study "travel (airlines and airports), hospitality and retail are more prone to terror attacks as compared to others". These are the soft targets due to sheer volume of people visiting such places and easy access, it said.
Although the fight against terrorism might be seen primarily as the role of the government but with corporate assets and executives becoming vulnerable, institution can no longer treat organisational security as a mere administrative issue, the survey said.
Over 85 per cent of respondents believe corporations need to give cognisance to terrorism in building their security plans.
The survey further reveals that on security check up aspects, background verification of employees was deemed the most important aspect followed by IT and perimeter security.
About 14 per cent participants said they did not conduct background verification on their employees, while 35 per cent said no background checks for vendors are undertaken.
However, due diligence of vendors or service provider, training and perimeter security were identified as the weakest area within the organisational security.
Meanwhile, the consultancy firm suggests that educating IT users with risk management principals and countermeasures in case of a disaster or a terrorist attack can reduce the risk.
