Insider Events - Communications Guidance

We are encouraging any and all organisations to “Be Insider Risk Ready” under a new campaign we are launching in 2024

Last Updated 04 March 2024
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Insider Events: Communications Guidance

After almost a year in research and development our insider risk experts have worked with crisis and communications experts to conduct research from numerous volunteers across NPSA’s customer base to understand how insider risk is understood, communicated and managed. One area we felt we needed to address was the preparation for and providing guidance on how to manage communications during an insider event. 

We recognise that most organisations have some form of contingency or generic crisis plan. What we hope to explain and explore in our NPSA Insider Event Communications Guide is how these situations are different from an ordinary crisis event. How internal communications plays a really important role in managing a situation as much as external communications if the event is critical enough. 

Being prepared is vital. NPSA have recently developed the Insider Event Communications Guidance to help your business' preparedness so that you can effectively manage an insider event. This guidance has been created with insider risk experts working in partnership with NPSA customers to research how organisations currently manage insider events, how organisations structures work when an insider event occurs and has culminated in a communications guide for insider events which helps you Be Insider Risk Ready.

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We also highlight the importance of preparing and rehearsing for an event – have you go the right team in place to deal with an event when it happens? Are the barriers broken down between HR and Comms and Security? It can be easy for organisations to focus on the negative aspects of an insider event when there are opportunities to bring an advantage and this plays into organisational culture and how your organisation manages its relationships with both internal and external partners. We recommend that you take the opportunity to safely rehearse the impact of an insider event unfolding and test your processes and procedures which is why we have developed the insider crisis simulations found here. 

When rehearsing for an event – using the communications guide can help highlight a number of actions that an organisation can positively take when communicating both internally and externally. We also go further and recommend other products that are free to use that NPSA offer that communications and security teams can deploy to shape your environment such as ‘It's OK to Say’ a programme of work encouraging staff to speak up when something seems off and making sure you have the appropriate mechanisms in place.

To help your organisation Be Insider Risk Ready with your communications – please download our communications guidance today.

Insider Crisis Simulations

For businesses who want to train and test their processes or raise awareness about Insider events through the lens of communications – we have designed, with insider risk experts, crisis communication experts and behavioural scientists, a series of specialist scenarios based on insider risk types – unauthorised disclosure, sabotage and physical harm (violence). 

These scenarios can be used to help your organisation understand how to manage insider events, how best to communicate both internally and externally, what that may look like from a reputational point of view and ultimately how to break down barriers and build bridges between teams. If you are interested in running a scenario please visit this page to learn more.

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If you would like to learn more about Insider Risk, please visit our Insider Risk Hub which contains all the information you might need to understand what we mean and how best to help your organisation.

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