Reposted from Security Management Magazine

This has been a make-or-break year for physical security departments, and how they handle their response to the pandemic will pave the way for executive buy-in—or loss of credibility. From how people enter a building to how they interact with others onsite, physical security professionals have been tasked with mitigating risk and ensuring safety more than ever before.

To address emerging risks, many organizations are rushing to adopt security solutions to keep their businesses operational and compliant with newly established health and safety standards. According to recent research conducted by Traction Guest, the overwhelming majority (92 percent) of enterprise security and risk professionals report that physical security is of greater strategic importance to their organization now than it was before the pandemic. With onsite health and safety concerns at an all-time high, 87 percent of businesses plan to increase spending on physical security going forward.

While it’s encouraging to see businesses investing more in physical security programs, not all risk mitigation measures are made equal. When managers deploy countermeasures without first understanding and addressing the company’s own specific risk posture, they are contributing to “security theater”—a concept that refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security.

In response to the pandemic, what steps should enterprises take to ensure they are truly securing their business and protecting employees and visitors versus simply participating in security theater?

Know the Risk

To provide value to the business without entering into security theater, a security leader must begin by understanding the risks his or her company is actually facing. Each company has its own unique physical security risks, and security professionals must allow those risks to inform how they implement new technologies and procedures.

While organizations should run risk assessments on a regular and ongoing basis, most risk assessments tend to take place after a specific event or incident. COVID-19 has created a point in time where all companies must reevaluate their physical security program to factor in both current and future pandemic-level threats. If you haven’t already, it’s time to dust off those risk evaluations and take a serious look at your security posture.

While there are certainly industry standards and best practices available as a framework for your program, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to physical security and protecting your business. In fact, the industry standard or buzzworthy solutions may not be the best fit for every organization.

Begin by assessing your company’s overall risk from a corporate, brand, and executive perspective. This high-level overview will provide you with a broad base of the most critical and potentially damaging risks your company faces.

Next, conduct risk assessments on a site- or location-specific level. While this task can be tedious depending on the size of your organization, this level of granularity is vital to an effective assessment. You will need to factor in location-based considerations, such as what type of facility you are securing, how much revenue the facility brings in, if there are irreplaceable assets or operations involved at this site, and any other facility-specific risks.

Once your location-specific assessment is complete, begin evaluating risk from a business unit perspective. Don’t forget to include the security department in this stage of the risk assessment; a worst-case scenario would be for your department to be the one that buckles in the event of an emergency situation.

Address the Risk

After completing a multifaceted risk assessment, you will be left with a comprehensive overview of all of the risks your organization faces. This assessment, however, does not include your company’s risk tolerance level.

Every company has a varying degree of risk it is willing to accept. Speak candidly with senior leadership, legal advisors, and other stakeholders about the level of risk your company is prepared to take on. Then you can begin to determine what the appropriate countermeasures are to address and mitigate your organization’s risk. These countermeasures can be both technological and procedural, but they must be tailored to meet the specific needs of the business.

For every countermeasure you put into place, you should determine how effective it is at eliminating your actual risk. For example, if you are trying to keep bad actors out of your facility, consider an access control system that can address that particular challenge. This step is critical in eliminating security theater, so as to not introduce systems that won’t have any substantive impact on the company’s risk posture.

Another strategy to tackle risk more effectively is to partner with your cybersecurity counterparts. Physical and cybersecurity leaders should focus on cooperation—whether that be through collaborating on response plans or conducting risk assessments together. This partnership creates a more comprehensive view of the organization’s overall risk posture and allows leaders to implement solutions that address risk from a unified security standpoint.

Enforce the Policy

Policy enforcement and governance are vital when establishing an effective risk management strategy. Many businesses today have great intentions when implementing new physical security technology. Without policies in place to govern and maintain these systems, enterprises are unfortunately unable to track whether the countermeasures they have put in place are effectively managing risk. Enter security theater.

Without managing systems properly, it’s easy to introduce new risks into the business. For example, a company may spend significant resources adopting a new access control system. But how many people at the company have multiple access badges? And how many employees lost a badge that might have fallen into the hands of a malicious actor? Improper management of countermeasures almost guarantees that there will be weak spots in the system. In fact, that shiny new access control system may be allowing more bad actors in than before.

As Physical Security Rises in Importance, Remain Focused on Risk

The pandemic has spurred the C-suite to recognize that ineffective health and safety protocols expose their people and their businesses to serious risk. As a result, senior leadership is more concerned with physical security than ever before, advancing many security and risk professionals into a strategic position within the business.

Physical security leaders must remain laser-focused on identifying risk, implementing measures with which to address that risk, and enforcing policies to keep those systems operational—only then can they provide true value for the business. We have entered into a new world order, in which effective physical security is of the utmost importance to the business. Security theater can place your company’s brand reputation on the line, not to mention lead to potential harm to employees and visitors. It is no longer about convenience or security theater, but instead about maintaining business operations and protecting the health and safety of everyone onsite.

See Original Post

Reposted from AP News

The crypt under the plaza in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, spared during the 2019 fire that devastated the medieval edifice, reopened to the public Wednesday after a painstaking cleaning to remove traces of lead dust that spewed from the nearby blaze.

The Archeological Crypt of Notre Dame features an exhibition on two figures central to the cathedral, writer Victor Hugo, who brought the character of the hunchback, the bell ringer, to the world in 1831, and architect Eugene Viollet-Le_Duc, who designed the soaring spire felled in last year’s fire.

The crypt is not officially linked to the cathedral, which President Emmanuel Macron wants to see fully restored by 2024, in time for the Olympic Games to be held in the French capital. The cathedral is currently off-limits to visitors as work moves ahead.

But the crypt opened its doors after a painstaking cleansing. The April 15, 2019 fire spewed toxic led dust, notably from the cathedral’s melting spire, throughout the vicinity. There were numerous examinations of the underground crypt.

“Every time we thought it had worked, and in fact, no, it hadn’t,” said Anne de Moudenard, chief curator of the exhibit. “So, decontamination then the (coronavirus) pandemic. Actually, this exhibition was ready one year ago.”

The crypt contains remains from archaeological digs discovered underneath the Ile de la Cite, taking visitors back in time. What is left of ramparts and thermal baths can be seen in the middle of the space. The exhibition, mostly of photos, videos and digital screens, surrounds the old stones.

The exhibit pays tribute to Victor Hugo’s famous 1831 novel “Notre-Dame de Paris,” known in English as “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,” and to Viollet-Le-Duc, who led the restoration of the medieval cathedral a few years later, including the building of its spire, which became a signature of the edifice just like its two Gothic towers. 

But it is Hugo’s novel that helped grow the global reputation of the cathedral, de Moudenard said. It “contributes to making this cathedral a national monument,” she said in an interview. 

At the time, the French Revolution did away with the cathedral’s statues of kings, the edifice was growing fragile and “Victor Hugo himself was upset by the state of this historical heritage.” He did battle with those demolishing edifices, “those who want to get their hands on old buildings to transform them into quarries.”

The exhibit is open to the public until the end of 2022.

See Original Post

Reposted from OH&S

Employers have taken extraordinary steps to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Whatever role you play in these efforts as a safety manager, remember to continually evaluate actions you and your company are taking. Even while a crisis is ongoing, making notes about potential issues and challenges will better prepare you for a post-emergency response evaluation.

At some point, your company will likely meet to evaluate what was done well, what could have been done differently, and what plans are needed to prepare for the next event. This analysis should include individuals with a strong understanding of emergency response actions, which likely includes the safety manager.

The evaluation may involve having others examine your decisions, so expect to receive some constructive feedback. Analyzing how you made decisions will help prepare for this. In addition, you’ll likely provide feedback on how others performed, so plan to do so diplomatically.

Questions to consider

The format of a post-emergency evaluation will differ for each company, but some questions that might be asked will likely include the following:

• Was the scope of the situation understood, or did it continually develop? As new information became available, how quickly did the company respond?
• What steps were taken to evaluate the accuracy of available information? Was there a process for taking action based on incomplete data?
• Were delays caused by getting key decision makers together? What actions were managers below executive level authorized to take? Were requests considered in a timely manner?
• How quickly were decisions communicated throughout all levels and locations? Was key contact information available and current?
• Did the company look to existing plans or policies? Were the plans current and available to key individuals? What changes may be needed for greater flexibility (such as adding multiple response options based on severity)?
• Were resources allocated efficiently? Was anything critical overlooked? What resources are needed (or can be gathered) to prepare for the next event?
• What alternative suppliers were considered, and are there contingency plans if those alternatives are not available?
• Did the company seem to take a reactive approach, or was a long-term goal developed?

You cannot know the nature or severity of the next event, but you can be certain that another event will occur. Evaluating how well the company responded to this crisis, and evaluating what changes are needed, will better prepare the organization to get through the next situation.

See Original Post

Reposted from Security Management Magazine

More employees are working from home, and more employers are keeping an eye on them through use of remote monitoring technologies. These tools perform multiple tasks, such as tracking keystrokes and measuring employees’ active and idle time in key applications and websites. Monitoring tools also help companies enforce data security policies, and even take photos to see whether workers are sitting at their laptops at home.

But tracking tools aren’t without risks. Workplace monitoring is subject to a variety of federal and state laws regarding when employees have a right to privacy and if and when they must be notified that they’re being monitored. From a legal perspective, disclosing surveillance is the smartest tactic. Letting employees know that they will be monitored removes their reasonable expectation of privacy—the element that often forms the basis for invasion-of-privacy lawsuits arising under common law.

And while being transparent about the use of such monitoring tools is essential to avoiding legal pitfalls, it’s also key to building trust in the workforce around privacy issues.

According to a June study by Gartner, 26 percent of HR leaders report having used some form of software or technology to track remote workers since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. That’s up from 16 percent in April, when the pandemic was taking hold. The tracking includes monitoring of work computer usage, employee emails or internal communications, work phone usage, and employee location or movement.

Many executives are eyeing the use of such technology because they understand that remote work is here to stay. Gartner projected that 47 percent of employers plan to let workers work remotely full time moving forward. In addition, 82 percent of business leaders across multiple industries plan to allow employees to work remotely at least some of the time as they reopen closed workplaces.

It’s important for organizations to be clear about their intentions when using employee monitoring tools, says Josh Bersin, HR industry analyst and founder of the Josh Bersin Academy in Oakland, California, a professional development organization for HR.

“Is the purpose to benefit employees, to evaluate them, or perhaps to penalize them?” Bersin says. “If the idea is to benefit employees, it’s good; if it’s to evaluate employees, it’s potentially dangerous; and if it’s to penalize them, it’s probably a bad idea.”

Multiple Monitoring Tools

Companies such as Teramind, ActivTrak, InterGuard, Sneek, and Hubstaff offer technologies that enable organizations to monitor their employees at home. “These are tools that many companies weren’t buying before,” says Brian Kropp, chief of research in the HR practice at Gartner.

Teramind’s technology can track employee time spent on apps, websites, or email; gauge team productivity levels; and help enforce data security policies. Teramind has seen three times the normal amount of sales leads arriving to its website since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, says Eli Sutton, vice president of global operations for the Miami-based company.

One way organizations use the technology is to track the time remote employees spend in productive versus unproductive or “nonwork-related” applications or websites, Sutton says. The tools have the ability to gauge active versus idle time spent in targeted areas.

Teramind’s tool gives workers an option to periodically log out of the monitoring software to briefly complete nonwork tasks, such as checking personal email. “It allows them to regain their full privacy, which is well-suited for today’s work-at-home environment,” Sutton says. The technology also can be automatically disabled if employees access sensitive websites, Sutton says, such as a healthcare portal or a personal bank account.

ActivTrak is another company offering technology that can give HR and line leaders greater visibility into how employees spend their time at home.

“A growing interest of our clients is looking for ways to improve the productivity and work habits of remote employees and teams,” says Javier Aldrete, vice president of products for Austin, Texas-based ActivTrak. “The technology also can indicate signs of potential disengagement or burnout, since it provides reports on when and how long employees are working on specific tasks each day.”

ActivTrak also helps ensure remote employees are using good data security practices. For example, if workers are saving files to storage areas not authorized by the company or using apps not approved by the organization, automatic alerts can be sent to managers who can follow up on such practices.

Legal Implications of Monitoring

Employers using monitoring technology for remote workers face the same legal guidelines as when using such technology in the workplace, legal experts say. But there are special considerations when employees use personal devices for work purposes at home.

“In most instances state laws require you to protect employees’ privacy rights by giving them advance notice of your monitoring,” says Jennifer Betts, an employment attorney for Ogletree Deakins in Pittsburgh. “The best practice is to get employees’ consent for monitoring in writing.”

Such transparency is not only good legal practice but also good management practice. “We’ve consistently found that when employees are surprised by the use of monitoring technologies, they get very frustrated” and it impacts their morale, Kropp says. “The word will always get out that these tools are being used, so the question is whether you want employees to learn about it from management or from another source.”

When organizations install monitoring technology, they need to consider that remote employees may be using personal devices for work tasks, says Usama Kahf, a partner with law firm Fisher Phillips in Irvine, California. “Employees generally have an expectation of privacy in their use of personal computers and phones unless a different company policy has been communicated to them in writing,” he says. If you’re using any form of monitoring technology that affects employees’ personal devices and retaining information from that monitoring—beyond information gathered when an employee’s device is interacting with a corporate network—there should be a written privacy policy disclosing what the company is doing and why it’s doing it, Kahf says.

“That policy should detail those situations and uses where employees won't have a reasonable expectation of privacy,” he says.

When an employee’s personal device is connected to a corporate network or virtual private network (VPN), Kahf says companies do have a legal right to require employees to agree to data security monitoring measures in those situations.

Legal issues also are arising around the use of videoconferencing to conduct business, Betts says, specifically related to the recording of the images and voices of employees without their permission. Organizations, for example, might use such video recordings to create transcripts or to document calls or for future training purposes.

“Some states have wiretapping laws that restrict employers from recording their employees’ voices or images without their consent,” Betts says.

Forward-Thinking Uses of Monitoring

Some organizations are using the data they gather from monitoring not only to keep tabs on remote employees but also to help plan for an eventual return to the workplace.

Kropp says one financial services company measures the performance of its front-line employees in two key ways: the number of insurance claims they process in an hour and the error rate associated with those claims. As the company analyzed the performance of remote workers during COVID-19, it discovered something of interest: Various employees were operating at peak productivity and efficiency levels at very different times of the day.

“They found that some people had a faster claims-processing speed and lower error rate earlier in the morning and others performed better on those metrics in the afternoon,” Kropp says. “Some also were doing their best work later at night.”

He says such findings may prove useful as the company begins to transition employees back to the workplace. “Many organizations will have to do social distancing in the workplace, and they may ‘time shift’ when employees work,” he says. “To the extent they can schedule worker shifts when people have proven to be their most productive at home may be beneficial.”

Whether business leaders are anticipating a return to the office, a fully remote workforce or something in between, monitoring tools can provide valuable insights into how work gets done and how organizations can support their frontline workers.

When Monitoring, Know Your Objective

Business leaders have a wealth of technology options to choose from when monitoring the activities of remote employees. Experts say the decision on what type of software to use—or even to monitor at all—comes down to a few fundamental questions: Why are you tracking your workers? Is your primary motivation improving the productivity and working conditions of your remote workforce? Or are you applying greater oversight and policing to ensure work-at-home time isn’t abused?

While some technologies can address both goals, it’s important to be clear about your objectives, says David Johnson, an analyst with Forrester who specializes in workforce productivity issues. On its own, the knowledge of being watched usually improves human behavior, experts say. But when used in draconian fashion, surveillance can damage worker trust and reduce employees’ willingness to go the extra mile for their organizations.

Some companies in heavily regulated industries, such as finance or healthcare, may have a need to monitor workers for compliance reasons, Johnson says. But he encourages other organizations to use monitoring software with the idea of gaining a deeper understanding of the behaviors and challenges of remote workers, not to keep eyes on their every keyboard stroke.

“The software can give you good insight into how people are spending their time at home and whether they might have too much or too little on their plates,” Johnson says. “The primary goal of a leadership team should be figuring out how to support the needs of their remote workforce. That might require changes like more automation or better technical support. Companies that excel at creating a good employee experience look at the data created by monitoring software from a place of curiosity, not punishment.”

Know What’s Being Measured

While monitoring software can gauge how often remote employees use work-related applications such as email, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint—as opposed to time spent on nonwork websites or apps—those metrics can sometimes be deceptive.

“Trying to draw conclusions about people’s productivity from software use can be a slippery slope,” Johnson says. “Does more activity mean that employees are being more productive? Not necessarily, especially where it involves knowledge work.”

The highest-performing, most productive employees don’t always log the longest hours, Johnson says. “Top employees might work fewer hours in a day but are far more efficient and effective in how they use that time.”

Transparency and Intent

Transparency is key to effective use of monitoring software.

“If employees aren't told they’re being monitored by management but find out in another way, it becomes highly uncomfortable,” says Stacey Harris, chief research officer for Sapient Insights Group, an Atlanta-based HR technology research and advisory firm. “You not only need to be transparent about the technology's use, but employees also should know why they're being monitored.”

Intent makes all the difference in the use of monitoring tools, Harris believes. “It’s very easy to make policy based on the lowest common denominator, or the people who break the rules most in companies,” she says. “But the organizations who excel at this make policies not based only on those outliers but on employees who get their jobs done in the most productive fashion, to ensure those people have the support and resources they need to keep performing at the highest levels.”

While monitoring software has its place, it shouldn’t be viewed as a panacea. “There's no substitute for managers staying in frequent touch with their people, even in remote environments,” Johnson says. “That’s simply good leadership practice that can’t be replaced with a productivity tracking tool.”

See Original Post

Reposted from Artnet News

The de Young Museum in San Francisco will reopen for members on September 22 and to the public on September 25, making it the first major art institution in the city, and one of the first in the state, to do so since US museums abruptly shuttered in March.

“We are thrilled that we will soon reopen our doors and resume engagement with our friends and communities, especially when California is still undergoing so many hardships,” Thomas P. Campbell, director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, told Artnet News in an email. “Our air-conditioned galleries are ready to provide succor to those who are weary of the smoky skies and bad air caused by the terrible fires across the state.”

When it opens its doors, the de Young will offer free general admission and discounted special exhibition tickets through December 2021 to essential workers. Advanced reservations are recommended, but a limited of number of tickets will be available each day at the door.

The city of San Francisco announced on Friday that it was giving museums and galleries the green light to reopen beginning September 21, pending approval of their health and safety plans. The de Young, having already devised its reopening procedures in anticipation of the day it would be able to implement them, was ready to act on these new permissions right away.

“The uncertainty of the reopening date has definitely been a great challenge, and we’ve had to pivot on many occasions!” said Campbell. “A task force with employees across museum departments has been hard at work over the summer, liaising with city authorities and planning and replanning the reopening of the de Young and Legion of Honor.

Other institutions are beginning to announce their plans as well. The Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, will have member preview days on October 1 and 2 before reopening to the public on October 3. The de Young’s sister museum, the Legion of Honor, is looking toward a mid-October reopening.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the city’s Contemporary Jewish Museum have yet to announce opening dates, but are likely feeling pressure to get visitors back inside the museum. Without revenue from admissions, ticketed events, and gift shop and restaurants sales, cultural organizations across the world have been hard hit financially by the year’s extended closures, leading to widespread layoffs in the field.

“We’re an institution that is heavily dependent on earned revenue, so extended closure has had a huge financial impact on our bottom line,” said Campbell. “We were fortunate to receive a federal loan in the late spring and our board and community responded very generously to our recovery fund appeal. Even with these contributions, we were still compelled to make the painful decision to reduce staff a few months into the closure. This was a very hard blow and we are thrilled to be able to bring furloughed staff members back to the museums after reopening.”

The state saw a limited wave of openings in June, but those institutions, including the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, the Laguna Art Museum, and the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, were soon forced to shut down once again, when Governor Gavin Newsom issued an order reinstating statewide bans on indoor business activities effective July 13.

After spiking in July and August, infection rates have dropped across California over the last month. Business restrictions will be loosened based on the number of new cases in a county and the percentage of positive coronavirus tests. Museums can operate at 25 percent capacity in counties that are in tier two, designated red for “substantial” risk levels.

Under the new reopening plan, some institutions in San Diego’s Balboa Park museum complex began welcoming the public on Labor Day weekend, including the San Diego Museum of Art on September 5. Other art institutions that have followed suit include the Laguna Art Museum (September 10) and the Bowers Museum (September 12). The grounds at the Huntington Library, Art, Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino have been open since July 1, but the art galleries and other indoor facilities still remain closed.

At the de Young, returning visitors can catch “Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI,” the group show featuring artist interpretations of the implications of artificial intelligence, which was open for less than a month before lockdown, and “Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving,” which was supposed to debut in March after a blockbuster run at the Brooklyn Museum.

“Our Frida Kahlo exhibition closed before it opened,” Campbell said. “The paintings, costumes and artifacts that comprise this show have been hanging in darkness for six months. Frida is dear to the heart of many Bay Area residents and we are happy that our visitors will finally be able to enjoy this beautiful exhibition.”

But the closure also meant postponing the museum’s highly anticipated Judy Chicago retrospective. Originally slated to open in May, it will now bow in summer 2021, leaving the de Young scrambling to come up with a placeholder. The result is the “de Young Open,” featuring over 800 works by local artists.

“With our loan exhibition schedule up in the air, we decided to focus on the community by issuing an open call to all Bay Area artists,” Campbell said. “Anticipating perhaps a few hundred submissions, it was mind-blowing to see 12,000 works from almost 6,000 artists come through.”

See Original Post

Reposted from BBC

The works include first editions of Galileo and Isaac Newton.

They were taken by thieves in January 2017 who cut holes in the roof of a warehouse in Feltham then abseiled in, dodging sensors.

The men were identified as being part of a Romanian organised crime gang.

The gang is responsible for a series of high-value warehouse burglaries across the UK, London's Metropolitan police said in a statement.

Officers discovered the books underground during a search of a house in the region of Neamț, in north-eastern Romania, on Wednesday.

The find follows raids on 45 addresses across the UK, Romania and Italy in June 2019, investigators say. Thirteen people have been charged, 12 of whom have already pleaded guilty.

The hoard includes rare versions of Dante and sketches by the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya, as well as the titles by Galileo and Isaac Newton dating back to the 16th and 17th Centuries. 

"These books are extremely valuable, but more importantly they are irreplaceable and are of great importance to international cultural heritage," said Det Insp Andy Durham, from the Metropolitan police's Specialist Crime South command. 

The works were being stored in a warehouse ahead of being transported to a specialist book auction in Las Vegas, in the US, when they were stolen. 

The thieves cut through the roof of the warehouse in Feltham, near Heathrow airport, and abseiled 12m (40ft) to the ground, dodging movement sensors, according to AFP news agency.

They then spent hours rummaging through bags before making off with their haul by the same route.

Investigators say the Romanian gang flies members into the UK to commit specific offences, then flies them out shortly afterwards, with different members taking the stolen property out of the country by alternative transport methods. 

The group is said to be linked to a number of prominent Romanian crime families who form part of the Clamparu crime group.

See Original Post

Reposted from Security Management Magazine

Earlier this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized burnout as a syndrome resulting from “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”

Security analysts are known for being at a high risk for burnout, which can lead to mistakes and increased vulnerability for the organization. As a former security operations center (SOC) analyst, I remember all too vividly the long shifts, the constant influx of alerts, the minimal room for error, and never seeming to have enough resources to do the job.

In the time since my days on the front lines of security, these issues have only been exacerbated by more alerts being generated by the myriad of threat detection and prevention tools that teams must leverage, an evolving and growing surface area to protect increasingly sophisticated bad actors, and a massive cybersecurity skills shortage. If all of that isn’t stressful enough, today’s security analyst is often working from home and trying to manage personal stress in an unprecedented situation.

In the wake of a global pandemic and civil unrest across the United States—and the world—we are all consuming a lot of information. Some of it is work-related, but a lot of it is not and bad actors are taking advantage.

For example, we have seen a huge increase in the number of phishing emails exploiting our trust relationships with organizations like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the WHO, and state and local governments.

But it’s not just the constant phishing attempts that are challenging, it’s the fact that adversaries know we are distracted. We are watching what’s happening around the world, trying to homeschool our kids, and helping our parents—or significant others—all while many businesses are in the fights of their lives. With so much going on both personally and professionally, the risk for burnout is higher than ever.

What Do You Do?

The number one way to begin conquering burnout within your own team is to increase its efficiency and overall effectiveness. If I were managing a SOC right now, before assessing new solutions or vendors I would ask these three questions:

1. How do you set people up for success and reduce opportunities for mistakes?

2. How do you ensure work is being done in a consistent and repeatable way?

3. How do you make sure the work that has to get done is actually getting done?

In short, focus on what you have to do and make sure the processes you must execute are effective, efficient, and have guardrails for an inevitably distracted team.

How Do You Accomplish This?

Start small. Define your incident response processes with documented standard operating procedures. Identify simple workflows or manual tasks that can be automated now. Set target metrics and key performance indicators, and generate real-time reports to track progress so you can pivot when necessary.

Automation is a crucial tool that can help increase the overall efficacy of your SOC. When it is combined with strong processes and documented procedures, your team is set up for success—minimizing stress and maximizing productivity.

See Original Post

Reposted from AAM

The authenticity of an organization’s actions to advance diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI) is judged by two key factors: their consistency and comprehensiveness. Companies that have been commended on their approach to racial justice, like Ben & Jerry’s, have been so because their efforts began before and will endure beyond when DEAI is in the spotlight on national news. Their commitment permeates the entire institution, from internal people practices, to supportive action with external partners, to their supply chain and products. And while Ben & Jerry’s readily admits that they still have room to grow and improve, their long-standing support of racial justice has garnered them widespread legitimacy in a national landscape where Americans remain divided on the genuineness of corporate responses to social issues.

Unfortunately, organizations like these are the exception. Many long-standing and widespread practices are directly at odds with advancing DEAI in the workforce, even at times when boards and CEOs are making external statements of commitment to racial justice. One example, which I would like to explore here, is that personal relationships often play a role in getting certain resumes to the top of the pile, or getting an “extra look” in the college admissions process for legacy students. Yet access to those critical relationships has never been equitably distributed. More often than not, these “recommendations” reinforce the advantages that uphold structural inequities, by lifting up those candidates already benefiting from the status quo, while blocking others who are already at the margins.

Over the course of my career, whenever a board member or senior leader has recommended a candidate to me for an open role, that candidate has typically been white, upper class, and from a select set of educational institutions. Regardless of the virtue of the recommenders’ intention, every time they put forth a candidate part of groups already overrepresented in the current workforce, they make it that much more difficult to advance racial equity on teams across the organization. Because of the power dynamics at play, their “suggestion” is often taken as much more than one—if I get a proposed candidate from a board member, I’m essentially receiving a request from someone in power who holds the purse strings to my job and livelihood. Though it is certainly conceivable not to move forward with the candidates they propose, it is not outside the realm of possibility that continuously denying these requests could lead to consequences, be they interpersonal or professional.

The effect is particularly damaging at smaller organizations where the number of open positions are few and turnover is low, meaning opportunities to meaningfully advance racial equity in the workforce are relatively rare unless people leave. This kind of nepotism can therefore seriously stymie DEAI efforts, even when those in leadership positions make claims acknowledging their importance.

In order to shift this paradigm, organizations should consider the following:

• Sharing detailed workforce demographic data with the board and key decision-makers directly, so they can understand how the representation of the organization perpetuates the status quo. Providing this context frames the conversation with DEAI values at the center and can be a helpful baseline for further discussion.
• Anchoring the organization’s DEAI goals as a form of accountability. Any time someone puts forth a family or personal relation for an open role, ask that individual to reflect on whether or not their recommendation advances the organization’s commitment to racial equity in the workforce.
• Investigating what biases are inherent in the organization’s notion of “qualifications” and whether those criteria are unintentionally stifling racial equity in the workforce.
• Educating the board and other institutional leaders about systemic racism and the ways in which their own actions may be complicit in perpetuating inequitable systems.
• Creating intentional opportunities and programs to expand the organization’s networks and relationship base through affinity groups, trade associations, pipeline programs, and search firms with an explicit commitment to racial equity and diversity.

Most importantly, organizations must model institutional goals around workforce diversity and racial justice at every level, all the time. It is not enough for us to put forth statements of solidarity without backing them up with consistent and concrete action. This starts by changing internal practices that continue to preference the well-networked and by “calling in” leaders whose actions get in the way of real change. Shifting this paradigm requires a deeper understanding of our own roles in advancing racial justice and creating a more equitable playing field, by recognizing age-old practices of privileging personal connections as a form of nepotism that perpetuates racial inequity. Our actions must align with the organizations our words say we want, so that we may actually become them.

See Original Post

Reposted from Artnet News

On August 27, three days after getting the green light from New York State, the Museum of Modern Art reopened to the public, with mandatory reservations, limited capacity, and new safety protocols in place. But museum staff has already been back for weeks: unlike many other art institutions across the city, MoMA required that all employees resume working on site in staggered shifts beginning July 6, the same day the city entered phase three of its reopening.

“The heart of the museum’s mission is being accessible to the public,” reads a message to staff on MoMA’s Returning to the Workplace webpage. “This requires us to reactivate our building, and be physically present to interact with our visitors, space, and collection.”

In order to keep working exclusively from home, staff members had to provide documentation demonstrating insurmountable childcare challenges or medical conditions that put them at an increased risk from the virus—and were required to reapply for these exemptions ahead of Labor Day.

That decision has proven controversial among some staff members, who contend that the institution’s response to the pandemic and its approach to reopening are intrinsically linked to problems that have come under the microscope across the museum sector in recent months: structural racism and inequitable treatment of workers.

“We’re here to serve the public and we want to be available to people, but the entire return to work policy has been framed in a really punitive way, and not taking into account the real concerns about the virus,” one staff member, who asked to remain anonymous, told Artnet News.

“It almost feels like there are more staff here right now than there are visitors,” another worker, also speaking anonymously, told Artnet News. “There is not much actual reason for us to be at the museum right now.”

A Time of Reckoning

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests that spread across the country this summer, many museums have faced calls to look inward and to address issues of racial discrimination. At the same time, the ongoing push toward unionization within the field, coupled with widespread layoffs and furloughs in an increasingly cash-strapped sector, has raised new concerns about how institutions treat their staffs.

To date, MoMA has avoided making headlines like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum, both of which unveiled new equity and diversity plans in the face of public criticism.

But behind closed doors, similar concerns have been raised at MoMA. On June 11, the museum’s education department sent a letter to senior leadership and the president of the board of trustees outlining 11 concrete steps the museum should take to combat structural racism, including the formation of a cross-departmental Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion task force.

In an all-staff email on June 22, MoMA director Glenn Lowry announced that he had formed a steering committee made up of BIPOC staff from across departments. A museum representative told Artnet News that the committee was formed “in response to a museum-wide commitment to prioritize anti-racism in all aspects of our work” and has “a combined tenure of 68 years experience at MoMA.”

The education department had also asked that its letter be shared with the entire MoMA staff, which it was not. As staff returned to work on site on July 6, a larger group of employees—229 staff members across 30 departments—sent a follow-up email to the full workforce expressing concern with the reopening procedures and what they saw as the museum’s lack of action regarding anti-racism efforts.

“The current plan, though framed in the name of equity, does not adequately consider the disproportionate impact that COVID-19 has on the health, safety, and well-being of Black frontline staff and communities of color living in an already inequitable system of white supremacy,” the letter stated. “Black frontline, non-management staff members have not been meaningfully involved in MoMA’s decision-making around the pandemic, despite the fact that many of these staff members have continued to physically work at the museum since March.”

The museum, meanwhile, has suggested it has gone above and beyond to ensure the safety of workers. To help devise safe reopening procedures, it hired Bernard Camins, the director for infection prevention for the Mount Sinai Health System, as a consultant.

Under Camins’s guidance, MoMA “implemented staff health questionnaires, temperature checks, PPE and social distancing requirements and new health and safety workflows, configurations of the workspaces, and protocols in the galleries,” a museum rep said.

MoMA also co-led the city museums reopening task force, a coalition of top museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney that formed to develop uniform safety measures. But unlike MoMA, many of its peer institutions, including the Guggenheim and the Brooklyn Museum, are instructing office workers to continue doing their jobs remotely where possible.

Equity vs. Equality

MoMA is operating with office staff at just 50 percent capacity (all employees rotate in and out), but, sources contend, different employees face vastly different degrees of risk. Some workers live close enough to walk or bike (Lowry lives in an on-campus apartment provided as part of his compensation), but others have hour-long subway commutes that greatly increase their potential exposure to the virus. And those disparities don’t go away once workers set foot in the museum.

“Senior leaders can go into their office and close their doors and not see anyone for the rest of the day,” said the first MoMA employee. “People on the front lines have to interact with the public.”

In what some staff described as a heated Zoom staff meeting on June 29, Lowry insisted that having all staff on site was a matter of solidarity. “The idea that some of us can work at home because what? We’re better educated? We’re white? We’re privileged? You make up the reason why we think we can work at home, but others of us actually have to be at work,” he said in a recording obtained by Artnet News. “That’s not the institution I want to be part of. I think we’re all in it together.”

“While some of us might be able to argue we never have to be in the museum to still do our work, that’s not equity—that’s the opposite of equity,” Lowry added. “To suggest somehow that one population can be at risk, and another population shouldn’t be at risk to make it less risky for the population that’s at risk, is absolutely crazy.”

Some employees felt Lowry’s attitude skirted the real dangers posed by MoMA’s approach. “Equity is looking at how we are all affected differently and trying to find a solution that gives us all the same opportunities for better outcomes—as opposed to equality, which gives us the same solution, but where our outcomes are still affected by our context,” a third MoMA staffer said. “As a Black staff member, I’m extremely aware of how my community has been impacted by COVID.”

The third employee recalled a recent virtual all-hands meeting that offered a stark example of the divisions within the staff. “There was this really laughable moment when we were asked to applaud for all the security officers and none of them were on the call—like one person from security was on the call!” the employee said. “The health and safety discourse can’t be divorced from the lack of movement on race and racism at the museum—they are totally bound up with each other.”

As the museum prepared to welcome back the public, it hung a new sign in the lobby listing the names of MoMA’s essential workers, thanking them for their continued work throughout the crisis. To some, the move felt like an empty gesture after the museum stopped offering hazard pay in July. (MoMA did not answer inquiries regarding hazard pay.)

“It starts to feel like this is being done in order to ease the trustees’ anxieties,” the second worker said. “Getting all of us back to the museum gives the board a sense the museum is operational and will at some point go back to being more financially self-sustaining.”

An Unprecedented Squeeze

MoMA has yet to disclose a projected deficit resulting from the closure, but the lockdown has placed unprecedented pressure on its balance sheet. “We all have to recognize that we have to be present, and that at some point the money is going to run out if we can’t get the museum up and running,” Lowry said in the staff Zoom meeting.

Before lockdown, and on the heels of its $400 million renovation, which was unveiled in October 2019 after a four-month closure, MoMA offered an early-retirement program. A spokesperson described it as “a generous offer keeping in mind long-serving senior staff who worked hard to finish the years-long building project… and who might have otherwise taken an earlier voluntary retirement program.” A similar offer was extended after the 2004 expansion; about 40 employees signed on this time around.

Now, with Lowry enacting a $45 million budget cut, down to $135 million from $180 million, sources at the museum tell Artnet News that MoMA has also introduced a voluntary buyout package. The hope is that buyouts, in conjunction with leaving 60 open positions unfilled, will allow MoMA to eliminate 220 positions without layoffs (other than the 85 museum educator contracts terminated in March).

“Like other museums in New York City and across the country, this pandemic and its economic impact is the most serious financial crisis we’ve ever faced,” said MoMA’s spokesperson. “We will continue to look for ways to bring costs down, to maximize revenues, and to push through this fiscal crisis.”

The museum did not offer any comment on the terms of the buyout, but some staff members are not appreciative of the offer.

“People are faced with the possibility of either forcibly losing their jobs or having to take a buyout package,” the first employee said. “Or coming into the office to risk their life, when they could do their work perfectly fine from home.”

See Original Post

Reposted from The Washington Post

In an action streamed live on Facebook, a group of activists took a Congolese funeral statue from a Dutch museum, saying they were recovering art looted during the colonial era. The activists were quickly arrested and the statue returned undamaged, the museum said Friday.

The Afrika Museum said in a statement that the statue was removed Thursday from the museum located in Berg en Dal, near the eastern Dutch city of Nijmegen.

One of the Black rights activists, Mwazulu Diyabanza, said in a post on Facebook that the removal of the statue was “part of the recovery of our artworks that were ALL acquired by looting, robbery, violence” in colonial times.

The incident came amid continuing anger at symbols of colonialism and slavery in the United States and Europe after George Floyd’s death while in police custody led to global protests against racial injustice.

The statue action in the Netherlands came the day that prosecutors in neighboring Belgium said that a tooth presumed to be from Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba would soon be handed back to his relatives after years of lobbying efforts.

In June, five protesters, including Congo-born Diyabanza, were stopped before they could leave the Quai Branly Museum in Paris with a 19th century African funeral pole and placed under investigation by French prosecutors.

The Dutch museum said that to avoid a conflict that could have caused damage to the statue, its security officers did not prevent the activists from leaving the building with the artifact as they knew police were nearby.

The Facebook livestream ended with police handcuffing one of the activists on a road near the museum. Diyabanza did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment that was left on his cellphone voicemail Friday.

The Afrika Museum is part of a group of Dutch museums that last year published a set of principles for handling claims on cultural objects in their collections. A spokesperson for the museums could not immediately be reached for comment.

See Original Post