Substantial Benefits Attained at Preparation for Potential Crisis (Essay Sample)

Module-4 SLP
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Module-4 SLP
Introduction
Since defining organizational crises might lead to misconceptions and exaggerations, an apt explanation of such circumstances might allude to critical situations with the potential for escalating, falling under governmental scrutiny, jeopardizing corporate image, and damaging revenue generation. Within IT investments, control and security correlate with normal functionality and protect operational procedures. Important data that appears within IT domains include information regarding financial assets, medical records, job performance reviews, trade secrets, marketing strategies, and product development plans. Therefore, preparing for a potential crisis enables companies to reap substantial benefits through enhanced trading opportunities and managerial improvement. Leaders within Information Technology firms should understand the stages that define crisis management such as preparation, planning, and implementation. To avoid misconceptions and exaggerations regarding the potential crisis and possible solutions, effective leaders should prepare several predefined procedures that can minimize time wastage during unexpected scenarios. 
When defining crisis management, most scholars allude to circumstances that threaten organizational values, restrict the time available for response, and occur unexpectedly. During such scenarios, the organization’s reputation, employees, services, and products could experience significant damage. Therefore, corporations, especially those operating through IT networks should develop teams that can prepare mitigation plans. In that regard, the teams ought to include individuals from most organizational departments such as technical operation, senior administration, consumer affairs, and public relations. Even then, maintaining efficient communication systems might allow IT firms to maintain stakeholders’ goodwill and minimize disruptions upon business operations. Despite the challenges that hinder attempts pertaining to crisis resolution, effective leaders within Information Technology firms and other organizations must counter potential threats through preparedness plans that incorporate different stakeholders and adhere to prevailing regulatory standards. 
Organization and Attributes
While most risk management scholars might dispute the presence of increased proliferation of organizational hazards, few can refute that technological advancement and the complexity of civilized life have increased accidents’ occurrence. Indeed, the indisputable entropy threat, which is embedded within the natural eco-system, corporate negligence might precipitate crises that sprout into damages. For instance, due to increased Internet connectivity and telecommunication networks, online companies should invest heavily in risk management to avert imminent threats. Faced with such threats, managers within such firms should select the optimal strategies and comprehend the art strategic-decision making. To that end, efficient organizational structures and values must encourage strategic planning rather than tactical measures, which prioritize short-term gains. By making decisions based on informed reasoning and reliable information, company leaders within Information Technology (IT) relying firms and other industries can minimize the occurrence of crises. 
Apart from the emergence of new predicaments and vulnerabilities, leaders within IT firms must consider elements relating to government changes. For instance, the increasing rate of decentralization and privatization has decapitated the government’s capacity for mitigating risks in critical sectors such as utilities and infrastructure. According to Baubion (2011), “crisis management comprises various phases: preparedness before crisis, response to limit damages during the crisis and feedback after the crisis” (9). While past approaches to disaster management within IT firms emphasized developing capacities and tools for past crises, present circumstances demand that managers should develop a landscape that enables readiness for unknown events. Even then, organizational leaders must also lean on previous practices that prioritized sectorial risk assessments for industrial accidents, natural hazards, evacuation procedures, and pandemics. Efficient implementation of such attributes requires organizations to prepare emergency plans, identify risks and vulnerabilities, allocate resources for emergencies, and develop capacities. 
When implementing risk management processes for IT systems, organizations seek to minimize the impact that might result from unexpected events. Therefore, companies have to integrate effective risk management within the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC). For such eventualities, managers within IT-dependent firms should understand the five phases of an IT system SDLC, including operation, maintenance, initiation, implementation, development, and disposal. As such, personnel tasked with identifying hazards that threaten IT systems should collect information concerning the software, data and information, hardware, data sensitivity, system mission, data criticality, and interfaces. Other relevant clues could relate to functional requirements, security architecture, policies, network topology, technical controls, and storage protection. However, mitigating potential risks depends on the stage within the SDLC, whereby different solutions entailing design, security rules and attributes, design documents, data on system configuration, and system description. 
An effective organizational framework targeting IT risks should consider all potential threats, such as deliberate human actions and natural catastrophes. For instance, IT relying firms should envisage risks posed by non-deleted system identifiers belonging to terminated employees, company firewalls that facilitate incoming telnet, flaws discovered by the vendor and awaiting new patches, and use of water sprinklers by data centers to quell a fire. The hazards posed by such events might include access to proprietary data, browsing system files using guest ID, wrongful obtaining classified system files, and spoiling hardware functionality. Stoneburner et al. (2002) assert that important attributes within organizational plans for potential risks concerning IT systems could entail “proactive methods, employing system testing” that “can be used to identify system vulnerabilities efficiently, depending on the criticality of the IT system and available resources” (17). Perhaps corporations that partake in such activities might benefit from the security and regulatory directives; including Federal Information Processing Standards Publications, Privacy Act of 1974, and industry practices. Since threats might emerge through human actions or natural factors, effective strategies must account for hardware, firmware, software, authentication and identification mechanisms, control methods, and encryption techniques. 
Types of Crisis
Sometimes, corporate leaders might bear little information regarding potentialities, risk factors, and predisposing elements. Indeed, practitioners within the IT industry might often confuse crises with ever-occurring circumstances that arise due to inevitable circumstances. To that end, scholars on organizational predicaments have often struggled to differentiate between crisis and everyday business circumstances, often due to emerging circumstances such as challenging environmental conditions. Indeed, for many organizations, managing the time frame and appropriating the accurate resources ensures that companies adhere to the public and regulatory attention. Perhaps the plausible explanation for such situations stems from the copious amount of time taken resources to handle arising authoritative concerns. While scholars bear little knowledge regarding crisis types and organizational systems, evidence suggests that a proactive attempt might contemplate emerging issues such as competitors and regulatory elements. 
For a crisis to exist, several variables are necessary including; surprise, the impossibility of possible goals, and surprise. Even then, the decision time is often short, depending on the threat pertaining to the achievement of the goals. While contemplating the types of organizational crises, scholars must accept that healthy budgets cannot account for unplanned contingencies. Accordingly, corporate leaders should appreciate that crises occur akin to pays, often entailing plots that disorient effective organizational structures. Indeed, Dinkin (2007) asserts that “there are three general types of crises: creeping crisis, periodic threat, or sudden threat” (22). Therefore, the available evidence suggests that organizational leaders ought to consider potential eventualities and enforce realistic models that account for possible eventualities. 
According to most organizational leaders, crises occur through several processes and types, often delineated as a sudden or periodic threat, and a creeping crisis. Indeed, a creeping crisis is a threat that challenges organizational framework and gradually increases, such as the continuous negotiations regarding healthcare reform. Further, the periodic threat entails risk factors that occur periodically and includes events such as budget–cutting mandates and governmental changes. Most challenging is the fourth type of predicament, often described as the sudden threat, which scholars consider as most eminent due to the effects that bear upon corporate structures. Within IT firms, such crises challenge the organizational leaders to implement effective counteraction strategies that anticipate, preempt, and prevent the occurr...