Sean Nero

The Amer­i­can Cham­ber of the Com­merce of T&T (Am­ChamTT) has en­tered in­to an agree­ment with In­di­ana Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia for tech­nol­o­gy work­shops t0 help safe­guard lo­cal busi­ness­es against cy­ber ter­ror­ism.

Am­ChamTT pres­i­dent Ravi Suryade­vara said as part of the 20th Health Safe­ty Se­cu­ri­ty and En­vi­ron­ment Con­fer­ence (HSSE) con­fer­ence next month, the group will host two full-day work­shops to height­en the aware­ness and ad­vance mea­sures to com­bat cy­ber es­pi­onage. He said that type of threat to the busi­ness sec­tor could not be ig­nored.

His con­cerns were re­in­forced by IBM Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man, CEO and pres­i­dent, Gin­ni Romet­ty, who re­cent­ly de­scribed cy­ber crime as the great­est threat to every com­pa­ny in the world.

Suryade­vara said: "In 2015, Lloyds, a British in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, es­ti­mat­ed that cy­ber-at­tacks cost busi­ness­es as much as $400 bil­lion a year. As a re­sult of this, they in­di­cat­ed that the de­mand for cy­ber in­sur­ance has grown con­sid­er­ably in re­cent years. The trans­fer of da­ta with­in coun­tries across bor­ders is what dri­ves to­day's glob­al econ­o­my. Da­ta trans­fers al­low con­sumers ac­cess to the best avail­able tech­nol­o­gy and ser­vices. It al­lows busi­ness­es, both big and small, to ac­cess in­puts, as well as ac­cess to bil­lions of po­ten­tial cus­tomers all over the world.

"As we seek to digi­tise the var­i­ous min­istries and state agen­cies, while we ac­knowl­edge the ben­e­fits this will have in strength­en­ing these or­gan­i­sa­tions, we must be wise to mit­i­gate the risk in­volved as well, is­sues re­lat­ed to cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty and phys­i­cal se­cu­ri­ty, both of which rep­re­sent grow­ing op­er­a­tions costs for an or­gan­i­sa­tion."

Com­ment­ing on calls by ser­vice sta­tion op­er­a­tor for a re-bal­anc­ing of the fu­el sub­sidy to ac­count for mar­gins that had not been in­dexed to in­fla­tion or any oth­er changes over the last decade, the Am­ChamTT pres­i­dent warned that if the state failed to deal with these in­ef­fi­cien­cies, a large por­tion of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty would be sti­fled and in­evitably go out of busi­ness.

"If mar­gins are not rea­son­able, how can these com­pa­nies ad­e­quate­ly in­vest in the health and safe­ty in­no­va­tions that are in­te­gral to en­sur­ing the safe­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness of their op­er­a­tions?" he asked.

"We urge the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries to re­vis­it these ar­cha­ic reg­u­la­to­ry poli­cies and make a con­cert­ed ef­fort to en­gage in di­a­logue with the mem­bers of this in­dus­try. Many were grap­pling with sim­ply stay­ing afloat, while bal­anc­ing their com­mit­ment, their em­ploy­ees, health and safe­ty and the en­vi­ron­ment. The psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­o­log­i­cal stress of work­ing in an un­safe en­vi­ron­ment has a tremen­dous im­pact on em­ploy­ee morale and by ex­ten­sion pro­duc­tiv­i­ty."

Suryade­vara added: "The re­sult­ing loss of work time leads to dis­rup­tions in pro­duc­tion and can sig­nif­i­cant­ly dam­age a com­pa­ny's rep­u­ta­tion. The re­sult­ing costs to the econ­o­my can make the coun­try ap­pear less com­pet­i­tive and by ex­ten­sion less at­trac­tive to for­eign in­vestors.

"As the lead­ing busi­ness ser­vice or­gan­i­sa­tion fo­cused on trade, in­vest­ment and ex­port, we con­tin­ue to en­cour­age the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to look out­ward, to Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. To achieve this, we must be aware of the var­i­ous in­dus­try stan­dards, in­crease our abil­i­ty to adapt and have the ca­pac­i­ty to ser­vice these mar­kets with­out com­pro­mis­ing the health and safe­ty of work­ers or harm­ing the en­vi­ron­ment."