You run a successful business, but you are approached by what appears to be a highly regarded company interested in a possible merger. Do you move forward with their proposition without completing any checks?

In late 2018, we supported a client with a very personal case, being a victim of hate crime. Due to their background, they had been subject to very personal threats and harassment by an individual, starting with verbal threats, moving on to online stalking of the victim and her family, and escalating to waiting outside her home address and making threats.

Since 2010, cuts to police have seen a dramatic reduction in police numbers – numbers of officers are down by 25%, with a further £40m squeeze by 2020. Moreover, there is currently a ‘national crisis’ of detectives according to an HMRC report, and it doesn’t stop there – the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have had their budgets reduced by a similar amount.

This form of attack, was first called upon in the May 2017 edition of the Islamic State’s English language magazine, Rumiyah , as Islamic State propagandists urged western supporters that, “the objective is to create as much carnage and terror as one possibly can until Allah decrees his appointed time and the enemies of Allah storm his location or succeed in killing him.”

The media has recently been extremely scathing of the police in relation to several high profile offences – the dropping of numerous sexual offences cases due to a lack of review of key evidence, failure to disclose material that will assist the defence, and other mistakes in the investigation have led to concern about the conduct of other similar investigations. Several police forces have now ordered a review of all sexual assault investigations, leading to additional resources being taken away from front line policing.

Since Rumiyah 13 was released in early September, there have been no more releases of the monthly English-language terrorist propaganda magazine that targets and influences western supporters.

Terrorism as a threat to finances is often overlooked in favour of organised criminality online. In the latest edition of the ISIS magazine, Rumiyah, intended for western radical audiences, the terrorist-organisation called for targeted attacks against high net-worth individuals and corporations. This edition was released in the Islamic calendar month of Rajab, falling this year between 29th March and 26th April. In it lies a clear dichotomy, painting the world in black-and-white, of right and wrong, using theological justifications to kill the rich; “Just as the blood of the kafir is halal to shed, so too is the kafir’s wealth halal to take.”

In today’s current climate, with the constantly changing landscape and multi-faceted threats, the ramifications of an emergency can have a disastrous impact on your business. A catastrophic event, be it a natural disaster, security breach or being targeting by an organised crime group in a high profile offence, will almost always lead to an initial financial decline. And as the threat of organised criminality, terrorism, fraud and cyber-crime now affects those previously feeling secure, crisis planning and resilience is an issue that all major businesses should consider.

A prerequisite of holistic family safety is mitigating online threats – so a level of understanding of how information can be retrieved from the internet is essential. We often focus on protecting online data and individual devices: as the ‘internet of things’ grows it will be the unforeseen devices that we forget about – which are naturally insecure – which will cause the most significant and intimate data breaches.

Recent events in Turkey have demonstrated three things: a split military which does not have enough control to take the country, a president that does not have enough control to prevent a coup, and a world which does not have enough control to understand and interpret the volumes of ‘fact’ and ‘opinion’ created by such a shock.