Why Conferencing is the Key to a Successful Crisis Response

The Situation

Crises of all nature occur regularly, and often without warning. They cover the spectrum of human activity, from corporate errors to natural disasters to national defence. No matter what the crisis, they all have one common element: they cannot be solved alone.

The Problem

When a disaster strikes, the person in charge — whether a CEO, a government minister, or military commander — must quickly gather information and formulate a response. To do so he must be able to reach out to others for immediate help. Those human resources are not conveniently located around the briefing room. Instead, they may be at home, in another country, or at the scene of the disaster. One thing is clear: it’s difficult to reach every necessary resource, it’s a challenge to get the whole story, and it’s nearly impossible to get everyone on board with the same instructions. This, of course, means a crisis response is chaotic and ineffective.

During a crisis situation, the politician reaches for his mobile phone; the business exec for his email; and the ship captain for his radio. What if the politician depleted his phone battery? What if the business exec doesn’t have his computer available? What if the captain is on an alternate radio frequency? No matter what means of communication the person in charge uses, inevitably one of the key players will be unavailable. Despite having a variety of communications resources available, they are often incompatible, meaning real-time, comprehensive communications is impossible.

Other factors also play a role in crisis response: the delays in emails, the concern for recording possibly litigious thoughts in text messages, and the inability to reach those on-site with radios. Even video — a powerful and popular tool — suffers deficiencies that make it inappropriate for urgent crisis response.

The Solution

There is one means of communication that quickly affords crisis managers access to anyone, anywhere: the REDCOM CrucialConnect Crisis Conferencing System (CCS).

CrucialConnect CCS enables crisis managers to initiate multi-party voice conference bridges instantaneously. Conference members may be virtually anywhere in the world on any device. With all key players in a conference, the situation may be holistically understood in real time, and the decisive steps to counter the problem can be conveyed to everyone at once. That is how a crisis should be handled, and the REDCOM CrucialConnect CCS is the answer.

Critical Deficiencies of Communications Tools

As has been demonstrated time and again, crisis responses often fail because critical resources reveal their faults when they are most needed. Cases in point:

Fukushimi-area tsunami: SMS message use exceed server capabilities and were delivered several hours late

9/11: City administrators, fire-fighters, and police are on different systems and frequencies and are unable to communicate or coordinate activities

Webster, NY fire department sniper: Fire and police responders use personal mobile phones to communicate…until batteries are depleted

BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill: Text messages sent by specialists are used to prosecute the sender and BP

US F-16 bombs Canadian forces: Coalition forces in Afghanistan are unable to communicate, contributing to the deaths of four Canadian soldiers

Germany and elsewhere: unencrypted voice communications are intercepted by foreign intelligence agencies

As can seen in Table 1, most available methods for critical communication suffer debilitating deficiencies that make them ill-suited for crisis response coordination. 

Even video conferencing, which is much touted for emergency communications, is not suitable for critical discussions. Video demands that all parties have a video device on their person, and bandwidth requirements are often excessive.

Returning to the criteria for crisis response communications (everybody, anywhere, and now) the only solution that fits the bill is REDCOM’s Crucial Connect CCS. Other voice conference solutions, including free web-based services, suffer a variety of maladies, the most significant of which is the lack of interoperability with a wide variety of existing networks. CrucialConnect by REDCOM alleviates this problem with the ability to connect directly to the internet, LANs, WANs, the public telephone network, PBXs, satellite, and even radio networks.

Security and Encryption

CNN’s big break came during the Three Mile Island nuclear plant disaster when CNN was able to broadcast information before most crisis responders knew about it! CNN’s sources were on-site responders with radios, transmissions from which the network intercepted. In order to stop this from continuing as the crisis unfolded, crisis response officials resorted to communicating via paper notes!

Whether a crisis is a business concern or military action, secure communications are imperative. REDCOM’s CrucialConnect CCS provides multiple means of security, including “hiding” the conference, confusion mechanisms, authentication, and both inherent encryption and support for external encryption devices (both commercial and government) such as General Dynamic’s TalkSecure devices.    

In conjunction with publicly available IP encryption, encryption devices, and internally-encrypted conference processes, REDCOM’s Crucial Connect CCS can ensure completely secure end-to-end and point-to-multipoint multi-party conferences.

Drop-In Installation

Enjoying the great benefits of REDCOM’s CrucialConnect CCS is easy: simply install in any equipment room, connect to the telephone network, PBX, and radios, and turn it on. With interfaces for virtually any network connection, there is no network re-design or upgrade, no major engineering feats to overcome, and no additional equipment to buy. Yes, it’s that easy! And since CrucialConnect is delivered pre-programmed, it can be fully operational in hours.

For military users, REDCOM core systems have been certified for interoperability with US, NATO, and Coalition partners. Enterprise users can rest assured — if it works for the most demanding government clients, it will work for you.

Join the Satisfied REDCOM Customers!

From the Los Angeles Fire Department to the FBI, hundreds of delighted customers rely on REDCOM when a crisis occurs. Thousands of REDCOM systems are fielded by armed forces around the world, providing communications between the Pentagon, the Hague, national government offices, and generals in the field.

REDCOM’s secure conferencing solutions are designed for high-level corporate networks, legal offices, medical offices, and government agencies. Protect confidential discussions and avoid corporate espionage with a solution that has been deployed and proven by several critical agencies worldwide.

CrucialConnect CCS: The Solution for Crisis Response

Finally a solution for communicating in conference, immediately and privately, with everyone involved in managing a crisis: CrucialConnect by REDCOM. No other crisis communication system comes close to providing the comprehensive and powerful features that CrucialConnect delivers.

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