South Africa is entering a period in which different industries will resume operation in a staggered manner as the coronavirus lockdown is gradually lifted.

Companies are encouraged to be extra vigilant of the effects troublesome incidents may have on their performance and survival in uncertain times like these.

The Allianz Risk Barometer identified three risks which South African businesses are especially susceptible to – namely cyber incidents, business interruption and changes in legislation or regulation.

Click here to learn more about Cura’s Incident Management software solution.

With the COVID-19 outbreak and its consequences still weighing heavily on businesses, the threat of these risks has been exacerbated.

Occupational health and safety directives

Government has directed that businesses that are allowed to resume operations under level 4 must abide by an extensive set of strict measures to protect their employees from contracting the coronavirus.

Failure to do so could increase the risk of staff falling ill, which may put their lives in danger, in addition to harming productivity and having costly legal ramifications.

The directives include the following:

• Performing a risk assessment that needs to be sent to the government.
• Screening workers when they report for work.
• Preventing workers from reporting for duty if they show symptoms.
• Providing appropriate protective equipment such as cloth masks.
• Ensuring workspaces are sanitised regularly.

These are just a few of the additional legislative requirements companies will be burdened with and have to adjust to in the coming months.

Punishments for not adhering to the directives include fines and jail time.

Cyber incidents in remote working

Where employees are unable to return to their places of work, but are able to perform their duties from home, another threat lurks.

In an attempt to gain access to sensitive company information and systems, malicious attackers have shifted their attention from corporate to home networks.

This is because certain employees may be working on personal computers without the necessary company-approved security policies or using insecure connections to access their company’s systems.

Unauthorised access to work-from-home infrastructure can have devastating consequences for a company and its employees.

Managing incidents

Having incident management systems connected to IoT devices can enable connectivity from anywhere to increase the rate at which incidents are logged, investigated and resolved.

This also provides companies with valuable streams of data to prevent and proactively identify incidents across systems and locations.

Furthermore, it is essential to proactively log and report incidents to enable your company to adapt policies that will help prevent future incidents of a similar nature.

This is especially important for managing constrained resources.

Lastly, centralising your incident system will allow the company to use lessons learnt from different departments or business units and apply them throughout operations.

Cura’s Incident Management software

With Cura’s Incident Management product, many global companies are able to monitor and manage incidents such as:

• Workplace hazards or accidents
• Employee injuries
• Legal incidents
• Environmental incidents
• Reputational issues
• Financial loss issues
• Regulatory compliance issues
• Client service interruptions
• Near-misses

 Cura Incident Management software boasts the following features:

• Interactive dashboards and reports – Real time visibility into incident management activities.
• Unparalleled flexibility – Business users can configure the system to perfectly match existing incident management processes and best practices.
• Tasks, notifications and escalations – Alerts users and managers when tasks need to be performed or when incidents occur.
• Roles-based security and audit trails – Ensures the integrity of incident management information and tracks all changes to records in the system.
• Flexible deployment options – Allows organisations to host compliance information on-premise or deploy in the cloud as a hosted solution.

Enhance your incident management today

With Cura’s Incident Management software, your business will be able to deal with inevitable incidents to weather the continued storm of business-unusual times.

This article was originally published on as partner content on BusinessTech and MyBroadband