Paul Martin and Colin Rooke discuss the wealth of knowledge, policies & procedure and stats that are used to help clients figure our how to deal with the risks they face.
Listen to the full episode here, or read the full transcript below.
Paul Martin:
Welcome to Risky Business, Commercial Insurance with Butler Buyers. This is Paul Martin, your host. And joining me today, Colin Rooke, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist at Butler buyers. And he is also really the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist of the world. He’s the expert in this field and that’s probably the topic that I want to talk about today. We usually get into such specifics of, “Hey, this is something new that’s going on. There’s that going on?” Whether it’s cyber or, whatever, hard markets. But, I wanted to talk more generally about your approach to the way you look at helping clients figure out how to deal with the risks that they’re facing. But also how to bundle that up, package it, so it’s nice and presentable to provide to an insurance company and that you actually will get, not just a quote, but a good quote from an insurer, because you’ve told the story well.
But really, at the end of the day that’s your job. But one of the byproducts of all of this is this library of information that you guys have accumulated. You are all about tracking all of the latest stuff, and then you compile this information and make it available to business people. I bet you, not very many people know that, “Hey, if I got a question I could actually ask Colin, he would know.”
Colin Rooke:
Yeah, absolutely. For me to have enough data and information to do the show, we got to do a lot of behind the scenes research. And yeah, I mean, we’ve turned into this wealth of knowledge and policies and procedure and stats. And I just want to stress that, for anyone listening, if you have a question or feel there’s something you need. Is there a return to work policy or anything you’re struggling with, abuse policy, safety manuals and everything from newsletters.
So, a lot of the information that I’m sharing and discussions around new and emerging risk, it’s derived of course, from the information we take in. And so I’m more than happy to share that, changes to legislation around occupational health and safety. Reach out to us, to me and say, “We really haven’t visited this in a really long time. How can you get me up to speed?” Or, “What do I need to know, what changes have occurred in the last blank amount of weeks or months?” And we have all of that. In fact, we’ve got so much of it’s… I’ll sort of flip through the database and you almost forget just how much you have and how useful it would be to so many businesses out there.
So essentially, if you’re in an executive or leadership meeting, having a strat planning session and there’re areas where you feel you’re delinquent, and certainly we’ve talked about a lot of those documents on the show, but not even close to how many we would have. Reach out and just say, “Hey, this came up, do you have anything for this?” Chances are we do.
Paul Martin:
Well you know, just the amount of volume of stuff that we’ve talked about in this program over the last few years is astounding. And I think that we’ve probably just scratched the surface of the kind of volume of content that must pass over your desk. So you’re in a kind of a clearinghouse area. You’re seeing all this stuff, for those of us who are just running businesses and we A, don’t have access to that river of information that you’re applying all the time. And B, I don’t know if time to digest it and consume it. You will do all that for us and you’ve actually bundled up and you made it, oftentimes it’s a step by step guide or it’s an information piece, something like that?
Colin Rooke:
Yeah. I remember one of the first shows we did and we were talking about our risk reduction process and what are the stages and what do we do with that information? And is it all bad? We only focusing on the negative. And I remember saying, “No, we have this organization where 100%, they have a culture of safety,” and that was not getting communicated. And when we went through the process and developed the plan, the number one topic was safety.
This continuation of the culture of safety. Well, why would we do that when they put such a focus. Well, it is the primary focus of this company. They want to be known for safety. And so we work with them on an ongoing basis and we provide safety newsletters. And so, as we are going through our information, we flag things that we can send off and make it very easily to circulate. And it’s our efforts or our partnering with our clients to say, “This is what’s most important to you. And it’s most important that it continues. So let us provide. Let’s take the headache out of, having to search and sift through the information. We don’t do that. And we’ll get it to you.”
Paul Martin:
I’m just trying to think of something that might be kind of current, that we could use to spark the thought process a little bit. And I think about the way the world is evolving around work from home, and the fourth wave of getting bigger, especially around here. And business owners having to try and figure out, “What am I doing with staffing?” And that changes almost on a daily basis, I would assume. But you guys have to keep track of this. What’s the latest from your perspective? I mean, what are you seeing? What information do you have? How can you help me with that one?
Colin Rooke:
Yeah, that’s a good one. For example, we have return to work policies and return to work guides. Now, normally when I say that it’s return to work after an injury or an event, how do you slowly integrate back into your daily? And what steps does the employer need to take, what documentation, how to get your ducks in a row? In this case, it’s this whole idea of hybrid workplace. Are you a 100% back into work? Is it more of a hybrid model? We have clients that are still a 100% remote.
And so same type of name, but different approach, right? We are educating on what you need to think about in this new return to work or hybrid environment. And so we spend a lot of time talking about things like end point security now as part of the return to work plan or call it this new way of operating we’re now highlighting new risks that we maybe thought were temporary now, for those that are saying, “This is going to be a permanent thing.” There’s new risks we need to address and discuss. And so we’ve got the plan in place. We can make it easy for you. You can look at it as an executive and make changes, roll it out. You can use our model, but the important thing is, we’re helping you with the education. We’re helping with the document itself and making working on risk easy.
Paul Martin:
Well, easy is a good thing. We all want to push the easy button. Right? But as I’m listening to you talk about this, it just strikes me as probably three years ago or something. We were talking about the old security and privacy things and around your cell phone. So you always worried that employees were taking corporate information on the cell phone, through email or whatever with them when they left the building. I guess now when they’re working from home, this is that same story, but on steroids, right? It’s just exaggerated.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah. Absolutely. We would talk about you might have management or if you have a sales staff, are they at a restaurant meeting with a prospect, leaving the phone out or heaven forbid you forget the laptop somewhere? And so we talked about sort of bring your own device policies and a little bit about endpoint security now, whereas that might apply to three to 10%, three years ago, it may apply to 50 to a 100% now. And so the new focus or where the focus needs to be is, “Okay, this is the low hanging fruit. How secure am I?”
Paul Martin:
All right. We’re going to dig into that. We got to take a little break because we’ve reached the midpoint in the program, but Colin, I think we’re into something that’s really hands on helpful for anyone who’s got a management role in business today. You’re listening to Colin Rooke the commercial risk reduction specialist with Butler Buyers, commercial insurance. This is risky business back after this.
Welcome back to risky business commercial insurance with Butler Buyers, Paul Martin, here, your host, and joining me, Colin Rooke the commercial risk reduction specialist with Butler Buyers. Colin, before the break, we were talking about that something we used to talk about called bring your own device, which was, does an employee use their cell phone at work, or does the company supply them with one and then they carry around two? You know that was a conversation point for a couple of years ago. Today in the post or COVID world and post pandemic, that’s taken on a whole new meaning because we still have people working from home. And so are they taking their office equipment back to the house or does the company have to supply? I mean, all of those questions come into play.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah, absolutely. And just kind of at a high level, over 90% of IT decision makers, so those supplying and those calling the shots believe that end point security is just as important as network security in the new, sort of post pandemic environment, it’s a really big deal. And prior to this recording, I made a few phone calls and I wanted to get some local thoughts too. And that is the feeling that we really have to turn our focus to what was taken home. We all rushed to get home, but what really is at home and what policy and procedures are in place and how are we secure? And the other issue too, is as you bolt-on more features, as you make navigating your work laptop, more difficult, the younger you are, statistically, the more likely you are to find a workaround and then bypass that all together.
So the older you are, you’re probably buy the books. You’re logging in, you’re using it for work, you’re in the server only. As you get younger and you say, “Gee, this is a pretty good laptop, actually.” If you are more likely to cut corners, and you’re more likely to know exactly how to cut corners because you find security to be a drag. And so that’s a big issue. And so, where the industry is moving is rather than bolt-on, built in. So you don’t have a choice. But if you say, “Okay, well, the equipment, for example, that I sent home is old. It’s barely current.” Does that equipment have on it or installed what you need it to do. And maybe should you be looking at what can you purchase today that’s going to eliminate or close the loophole.
For example, you see advertising around Chromebooks that have built in antivirus. You don’t have an option of not having it or subscribing or not, or it is right in there. And that’s this view around this endpoint security, that’s getting ignored as more people are buying laptops, Chromebooks, even printers, right? And most importantly, those with a wireless connection. I mean, technically if there’s a wireless connection, you run the risk of those being able to attack or hack into that network printer. And so those are the conversations that need to be had and a lot more sort of work and effort needs to put into those vulnerabilities.
Paul Martin:
My guess is based on what you just said, mom, dad work at a place where they’ve got pretty good equipment. Now they bring it home. And the next thing you know, the kids are on it, even though they’re probably told not to and all that sort of stuff. I mean, as a business owner, A, what’s my liability and all of that? B, how do I coach or help my employees when they go home so that they do have some level of security without upsetting the home apple cart and saying end up with kids angry at parents, because I’m not allowed to play or touch or whatever. How do I do all of that? How do I navigate that? Do you have information on that?
Colin Rooke:
Yeah, we do quite a bit and I think it all starts with arming you with the statistics, right? If I say, “Oh, it’s a big problem.” How big is it? But I can say, for example, 48% of workers in Canada believe that office security is a complete waste of time. And again, back to the younger demographic from 18 to 24 year olds, that’s 64% say, “I think it’s a waste of time. It’s holding me back. So I’m just not going to do it.” Now where we combat that though, is the education, what does it mean? Right? What happens when you take your laptop home, do personal things with it, come back into the office environment, log back in, what are the risks?
And it starts with one understanding the nature of the problem, what is it? How widespread… So making it real, right? Arming with some numbers of, okay, how significant is this? And then three, walking you through what you can do, how you can change that. Or at least again, arming you with knowledge, you understand where you’re at and you can budget accordingly. I mean, I’m not saying that you immediately replace every printer, every device, but you have to understand your risks and what you can do about those. And certainly educate those around those risks.
Paul Martin:
But it’s not a bad idea. I think I’m hearing you say that as a business owner, take a look at your inventory of assets and how current are they? And if you’re thinking about replacing it or you have a schedule, you might want to just be aggressive about that, stay on top of it or get ahead of it a little bit.
Colin Rooke:
Absolutely. And for anyone listening saying, Paul, Colin, we’re good. We have a policy around this, so I’m not concerned. Well, roughly 70 percent of businesses in Canada report having some sort of network security policy, however, 39% of Canadians in the workplace are unsure of what those policies say, and 32% didn’t know the company even had one. So you’re not as protected as you might think. It’s about reviewing. It’s about updating. It’s about educating and making it real.
Paul Martin:
It’s a bit of a classic, isn’t it? The boss thinks they’re covered, because they are. But nobody below them knows. And so by definition you’re not covered because no one knows.
Colin Rooke:
Absolutely. Yeah. And we get the same thing with fleet safety, right? All of our drivers stand to the limit and follow every rule of the road. Well, did you tell that to the drivers?
Paul Martin:
Well, you often see those vehicles, how do you like my driving dial this number? I mean, first of all, that’s a contradiction and safety anyway, you shouldn’t be posting a phone number on the side of a vehicle going 110K or something. We’ve got like a minute, minute and a half left in this program and solid information you’re giving us. But I’m just curious. How does the insurance company look at this conversation you and I are having right now? I mean, what’s their perspective on it?
Colin Rooke:
Absolutely. So we’ve talked about cyber reliability pricing being up to 300%. And we’ve also talked about seven out of 10 organizations that are faced with ransomware, they pay it. So it’s arming the insurance companies with the focus on endpoint security and cyber security as a whole, that’s going to reduce cyber reliability premiums. I mean, if you’re okay with a 300% increase, go ahead and pay it. And that’s the average, right? So I means there’s people with 600% increases in there. I mean, if the average is 300, it doesn’t mean that’s the marker. And so that’s why this is important. It’s all about arming us with knowledge and then us going back to the insurance companies to say, “They’re putting in the effort, maybe they’re not fantastic, but we’re working on getting from good to great.”
Paul Martin:
All right. Just wind up here, because we only have a few seconds left, but we started this program by saying you have a library and just maybe just elaborate invite people, what would they find in your library?
Colin Rooke:
Policies, procedures, manuals, newsletters basically you name the topic. If there’s an element of risk, our goal is to make your life easier. It’s easy to work on risk if we do all the heavy lifting for you. So reach out and just ask me, “Do you have anything for this?” And we’ll let you know.
Paul Martin:
Yeah. Templates, any of that sort of stuff.
Colin Rooke:
Exactly.
Paul Martin:
Colin thank you as always very insightful. You’ve been listening to Colin Rooke, commercial risk reduction specialist with Butler Buyers, commercial insurance. I’m Paul Martin. Thanks for joining us with risky business. Talk to you next time.