TRANSPORT RISK ANALYSIS
From statistics from various previous papers shows that almost all transportation companies face almost similar risks (Zhang, J. et al (2016). During our research on the risks that may encounter our company in transportation, the following are the four leading risks we are likely not to escape from. These are;
Cyber attacks
Since the globe has gone digital, our company in one way or the other, in order to satisfy the customer across the world must go deep and implement the use of digital operations, that is use computers and any other online aided devices.
By implementing this strategy, which is already working, we are exposed to hackers, who may need to gain our information and use it against the company for their own benefit. These activities include hacking and changing the destination of delivery, that leads to easy robbery or interfere with monetary transactions that may generally bring loss to the company in terms of trust of the customers (Galierikova, A. et al 2017).
This is the most dangerous section of the company, the Information Technology team should, therefore, ensure high encryption of the information, using the best encryption measures possible, to ensure consistency, reliability, integrity, and easy retrieval. This should involve the Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT).
Driver Shortages
Shortages of the drivers is another risk or challenge we are going to face because they are scarce and expensive to employ. And also, much private company, private car owners need drivers. So, finding skilled labour especially in our main cities will be a thorough task, to enable our company to run smoothly to achieve desired goals.
The company should equip itself enough drivers to reduce the risk of the driver shortage, and since it is expensive and they are scarce, it is, therefore, a good idea to outsource drivers or manpower from a low currency country, where there are abundant drivers with no opportunity, this will be less expensive and will save the company a great deal.
Poor infrastructure
As a transportation company across various means, with the poor infrastructure we can experience an accident and result in a total loss of the goods, damage of the vehicle used or delayed delivery of the good to the expected client. Taking care of roads may become poorly constructed leading to congestions thus wasting a lot of time. Use of railway transport is easily entitled to an accident if it is not in proper condition.
To minimize the shortages that might be brought by poor infrastructure, we have to establish agents across the towns who can keep the company informed on the whereabouts of the transportation means` condition, I.e. road, air, rail and water.
Weather
Most research papers show that all transport companies must establish a strategy to deal with the variation of weather conditions, regardless of the means being used in transportation. Using road transport, mist and fog can cause head-on head coalition, or loss of direction leading to a fatal accident, same to railway transport. Use of water transport, encounters cool water waves, strong water waves, ice bags among others that cause an accident and damage of the boat. Air transport might face heavy clouds, strong wind, fog and mist that may cause a plane to crash resulting in a great loss.
We as a company, to deal with weather changes, we need to have a connection with the weather forecasting, to receive future updates on weather highlights to understand and evaluate what is best suitable for transportation, in that particular condition. For us to have a good prediction on the weather changes, we need to establish a strong and active link with weather forecasting companies to stay updated.
Laws, treaties and conditions
The company should have their transportation lawyer if not can be replaced with a compliance officer who not only understands the transportations and rules but also has powers to organize the operations and ensure the contract is making up to the stated regulations. This aspect is to be observed in every sector, i.e. air, road, rail, and water transport. By having such manpower among the staff of the company, will aid the company to avoid most of the transportation problems that mercilessly disrupt the transportation chain, and waste a lot of billions in transportation.
Conditions that govern which means is used to transport particular goods have to well-defined based on the number of goods, urgent of goods, the security of the goods, weather, infrastructure in place among others.
Business Impact Analysis
BIA is a significant rule to consider when creating a business continuity plan (BCP), the following is a draft of the BIA as per research
Business activity
Dependency
customer impact
financial impact
Recovery Time
Overall priority
Information Technology
13
medium
medium
48 hours
1
Back office
24
low
medium
12 hours
3
Manpower
10
extreme
high
3 weeks
2
Infrastructure
14
medium
medium
10 hours
4
Environment condition
8
medium
low
2 weeks
5
Table 1: BIA analysis
From the table above, we recorded that from the business activity information technology, needs a total of 13 dependencies to recover to its normal operations, and has a medium impact on customers and finance, which requires 48 hours of recovery.
Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
During the disaster occurrence, an organization require a well-established business continuity plan, to aid restore normal functions (Palko, et al 2017). We have therefore developed a business continuity plan for the Global Trade and logistic company. The BCP covers the following aspect; Analysis, solution design, solution implementation, testing and acceptance, and maintenance. This life-circle is well illustrated in the figure below
This will involve all departments of the company in residing on a possible solution. In this scenario, observing from the analysis in table 1, we figure out that the urgently needed solution is to recover from information technology since it is given the priority, followed by manpower, back office, infrastructure and lastly environmental condition.
Disaster recovery plan
The disaster recovery plan (DRP) is designed to protect the company in the upcoming, present, and after disasters (Rostami et al 2017, April). The following are measures placed in a place for the DRP of the global trade and logistic company.
- It is equipped with a team whose responsibility is to figure out a disaster before, after and on happening, and fast respond to it.
- Before the disaster, it should create mitigation measures to minimize or eradicate those disasters in advance following the above-stated risks.
- If the disaster happens unknowingly, DRP is equipped with back-up measures to help resolve the current situation back to normal. This is achieved by, staying active online, to detect an intruder, keeping backup ready both data and manpower. Also maintaining smooth communication across the company.
Computer Incident Team
Since the Global Trade and Logistic company is operating digitally, we found that it is vulnerable and exposed to hackers on the internet. As a countermeasure, we developed a Computer Incident Response team, that detects and resolve any computer security breaches. The team need to monitor the system`s security events, to detect, alert, and report on the malicious incident. The team should consist of incident responders.