When I think of September 11th from a corporate perspective, I not only think of the human impact of the various affected businesses, but I think of the readiness or disaster recovery plans that companies had (or in many cases did not have) in place that would help them quickly get back in business.

We all know it was impossible to anticipate a disaster of that magnitude, but in our daily responsibilities as stewards of our businesses, we need to protect our organization's assets from misappropriation, fraud, or disaster. This ranges from having back-up IT capabilities (not only designed, but tested), rigorous protocols for protecting company data and information, and safeguards over a company's intellectual property. Most companies, and particularly those in the scientific and hightech fields whose futures depend on intellectual property, have every employee sign confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements. These agreements extend to outsiders with whom the company interacts — potential partners, customers, or even suppliers.

It is easy to overlook this important stewardship responsibility. When forced to deal with the hectic ordinary components of our day, it's often difficult to address the extraordinary threats. We may ignore the importance of proactive security measures or give in to requests to bypass the security system. Our responsibility as a leader of the organization is to ensure that preventive measures, laborious and time-consuming as they may be, are consistently carried out. We have to charge our managers with designing foolproof systems that are consistently followed, tested, and updated.

Many years ago, I was the CFO for General Cinema Theatres and annually — just like going for our medical check-up — we reviewed the policies and procedures governing the disaster recovery operations for the extensive data processing operations for our 300+ theatres. I vividly remember asking our IT organization to pull the plan off the shelf, open it up, and review in detail whether it was still applicable and more importantly, was it operational and recently tested. Invariably, the answer came back no and we had to set out to refine the back-up strategy.

In recent years, I have had the pleasure of working with biotechnology, medical device, and other technology companies. Although most of them did not have the extensive data processing operations of General Cinema's business, their protection needs were equally important. They needed to protect their intellectual property, which included know-how, patent details, competitive strategies, and other business information that was proprietary to the organization. Often, employees felt that the management was ganging up on them by demanding signed non-disclosure agreements, noncompete agreements, etc. As is so often the case, the challenge here is communications. Leaders need to set a positive tone when requesting signatures and explain why such agreements are necessary.

As a leader in an organization, it is our primary responsibility to communicate with all employees about security policies and their importance. We know these are not immediately profitable activities, but in the long run, they may be the difference between the success and failure of our businesses.

Now ask yourself... Am I a Leader?