Inside Asian Gaming

JULY 2018 INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 27 “We lost power, the generators worked, but what we hadn’t planned on was losing the water supply. It doesn’t sound like quite that big of a deal, but without the water you have no cooling. You risk losing your entire IT system and then you’ll lose your entire business.” – Las Vegas Sands Executive Vice President Lon Jacobs IN FOCUS “When do you alert the people who have been the subject of the breach? When do you let law enforcement in? When do you let in the regulators?” he recounts. “There are so many different constituents.” Once the initial emergency is over, focus turns to business recovery, from the bottom line to company reputation. If the crisis extended beyond the boundaries of your business, recovery efforts should as well, Rai says. “If something happens to the bank or the bus company, it effects all of us. So we all have to work together.” He notes that in the days following Hato, Melco deployed construction contractors and equipment from its Morpheus project to help clear debris from Macau streets. Once the recovery has momentum, it’s time to evaluate the crisis management plan and the response team performance, then make fixes for next time. You can bet there will be a next time. Resorts World Manila was attacked by a lone gunman on 1 June 2017. with many employees, customers and local officials. “The heads of departments must have someone to communicate directly with the government and locals so there’s transparency and clarity,” Rai says, and those arrangements need to be made in advance. INTO THE BREACH These days, cyber attacks pose the most frequent threat to gaming business. “A lot of work goes into trying to anticipate and avert where breaches may come from and trying to keep data secure as much as we can,” Jacobs, who serves as Las Vegas Sands’ global general counsel, says. “But once it happens, it becomes something that requires the entire company to be involved.” Responses often require outside technology experts and raise numerous legal questions, Jacobs says.