Defending Our Stakeholders : Corporate Defence Management Explored

In the current economic climate organisations are now under increased pressure to ensure that they are taking appropriate measures to adequately defend the interests of their multiple stakeholders (e.g. shareholders, staff, clients, business partners, suppliers, regulators, local communities and society in general). This requires being able to successfully demonstrate that all reasonable steps are being taken to help achieve this stakeholder obligation.This paper focuses on the workings of the corporate defence management (CDM) multi-dimensional framework. It outlines how this framework can help provide an organisation with a systematic methodology that enables both vertical and horizontal management of an organisation's defence related activities (governance, risk, compliance, intelligence, security, resilience, controls & assurance). It describes how CDM's five lines of defence approach can provide an organisation (and its stakeholders) with both defence-in-depth and defence-in-breadth. With such a corporate defence programme in place organisations can thereby provide their stakeholders with an enhanced level of comfort and an additional degree of confidence that their interests are being appropriately managed at strategic, tactical, and operational levels