Susan Maclean

Like children and gardens, companies and marketplaces either grow or wither. Nothing stays the same. One challenge follows another. These days the business challenges come faster than ever as it truly becomes a small world after all. The cry "innovate or perish" has become a mantra for manufacturers and retailers.

When the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision got involved trying to put together some rules on capital calculations with the current Basel II initiative, they defined operational risk management as "direct or indirect loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people and systems or from external events." Peter Keppler, a senior analyst in Risk Management on the Capital Markets team at Financial Insights, an IDC company, offers his perspective from more than 14 years of experience in financial services and risk management.

Established 21 years ago, BIMCOR (Bell Investment Management Corporation) manages more than $11 billion in investments that represent the pension funds and other investments of the employees of its parent company BCE Inc. and other subsidiaries.

Just as the computer journalists were summing up 2003 and warning about escalating hazards from increased malicious cyberspace contaminations in 2004, Mydoom.A and its variant Mydoom.B struck and broke all records for speed of infection. The worm was also the first to be blamed for slowing response times on the Internet due to congestion.

Being called to the podium at the 2003 Canadian Information Productivity Awards came as a major surprise to Bruce Fleming, VP and CIO of construction firm EllisDon Corporation.

The Global Market Risk Management System at RBC Financial Group spells competitive advantage for Canada's largest company as measured by assets and market capitalization.

When the Montreal-based payments processor Terra Payments began about four years ago as SureFire Commerce, a service provider was used for their IT application.

A company's major risks used to be its reputation and financial loss. Nick Galletto, partner with Deloitte Security Services,