Last week, I battled with volcano dust and overcrowded trains, determined to be at the Global Risk Summit of the Corporate Executive Programme (CEP). Due to Icelandic eruptions, my flight from Heathrow was cancelled, five minutes after I had checked in! So I joined the mad dash to get the remaining tickets on the next train up to Scotland. Six hours on a cattle truck with screaming babies and sweaty campaigners for the general election was just wonderful. Still, I got to meet Gordon Brown at Carlisle Station, who shook my hand whilst I offered him a brief analysis of what I thought his chances were on election day.

Despite the clouds of ash, all but a handful of Americans made it to Gleneagles in time for dinner on the eve of the summit and once we were there, the beautiful location and superb hotel made our long journeys thoroughly worthwhile. Everywhere I looked were the familiar faces of old friends, come together once more for this annual event.

The whole summit is operated under the Chatham House Rule, so I cannot tell you in any detail what was said or who said it but I can give you a flavour of how useful the two days were. CEP has always sought to look at Information Security and Risk from the point of view of all corporate board members. So, it strives to appreciate the impact on marketing, sales, finance, human resources etc from decisions made about a company’s information systems and how to protect information, reputation and brand whilst being seen as a business driver not a drain on resources.

This year the focus was on procurement in the 21st century. We looked at the legal and contractual pitfalls when putting together agreements with vendors for outsourcing major functions within an organisation and had a panel of legal experts to answer questions in an open discussion. We also looked at vendor management and how to insure that your organisation has the skill sets in its workforce to negotiate and manage the performance of your key suppliers. As well as presentations from senior executives with a wealth of experience, there are always workshops sessions in small groups where peer-to-peer discussion enables a valuable exchange of ideas and a pooling of knowledge to thrash out problems that we all face on a daily basis.

This years keynote speaker was Professor Nigel Shadbolt of Southampton University, who together with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, his fellow Director of the Web Science Trust is working alongside government to advance our understanding of the web and was appointed by Gordon Brown to help transform public access to government information.

As always the presentations were fascinating and the group discussions really useful, as through information exchange we aim to understand the needs of business whilst protecting reputation and mitigating risk.

For further details of CEP go to the website at www.globalcep.com