At some point, nearly every organization will experience a crisis. For many, unfortunately, their crisis planning strategy is denial: “That will never happen to our company.” Except that it just might. When all hell breaks loose, and management is freaking out, remind yourself of these “truths” of a crisis.

1. There will be short-term pain, there can be long-term gain. Try to stay calm and objective. There is no reason that short-term pain has to turn into long-term damage to the...

It’s not the kind of number you want to see increase. Unfortunately, 2014 saw a nearly 30 percent jump in data breach reports in the U.S. alone. Some companies have communicated effectively with their stakeholders, while others have failed miserably. Moreover, those failures have a significant cost in revenue, profitability, and reputation, in addition to the hard IT costs to beef up security.

According to the Identity Theft Resource Center (www.idt911.com), in the United States in 2014...

Are you prepared? Take this short quiz and find out.

1. Is senior management committed to communicating consistently openly and effectively during good times and bad?
2. Have you identified the most likely crises that may occur in your organization?
3. Do you have a crisis management/ response team?
4. If you answered yes to #3, do team members know their roles and responsibilities in a crisis?
5. Do you have a formal crisis communication plan?
6. If you answered yes to #5, has the plan been...

In 2014, many of the most venerable organizations in the world challenged our trust down to the core. The Institute for Crisis Management counted more than 223,000 crisis news stories in nearly 10,000 news outlets last year.

Download the free report at crisisconsultant.com

Data breaches at some of the largest retailers in the U.S., including Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Michael’s and Walgreen’s impacted millions of customers and forced banks to start converting debit and credit cards to the...