Monthly Archives: June 2012

Confessions of a risk manager

June 27, 2012
Confessions of a risk manager

My 14-year old son recently bought himself a not-so-inexpensive bike with his own money. On the Monday after the purchase he wanted to take the bike to school. I advised against this as he had a pretty lousy bike lock. “C’mon, dad”, he replied, “who’s gonna steal my bike in this neighbourhood?” (After all, we live in the suburbs and not in the worst part of Toronto where ruffians often steal $500 bikes so they can buy drugs and iPhones.) “C’mon ______” is a routine response heard by many risk management professionals and fathers. Bad things happen, but they won’t…

Read more »

Campers, risk management and bears (oh my!)

June 26, 2012

There’s an old joke about two campers that are awakened by a hungry bear. The first guy yells ‘run’ but the second guy stops to put on his running shoes on first. The first guy asks if his companion really thinks that the shoes will help him out run the bear. To which the second guy replies, ‘no, I just have to out run you”. Sometimes risk management is the same way. You don’t have to have the best risk management system, just one better relative to the next guy.

Read more »

Passwords, LinkedIn and the White Rabbit

June 7, 2012

With the news this morning that your eHarmony or LinkedIn password was posted on a Russian website, people are frantically changing their passwords today. Or so one hopes. Why all the urgency? Should anyone be concerned that some troublemakers are going to hack your LinkedIn profile and change your Harvard MBA to one from Ohio State (oh the humanity) or change your eHarmony preferred mate preference from athletic to BBW (oh the humanity)? What you should really be worried about is that your stolen password can also be used to access your bank accounts or email. (Oh, I hadn’t thought about that!) In…

Read more »