Why Should Private-Sector Organizations Use the CEAS Program?
“As a New York-based company located a quarter-mile or less from where three major terror attacks and one earthquake have occurred in the past 25 years, we rely on the CEAS program to ensure that our key personnel, whose roles are vital to the protection of our people, brand, and operations, obtain the access required to support our Crisis Response / Crisis Management teams.”
- Joseph Bellomo, Director Security Services, American Express----------------
What would happen if you were unable to access your business facility for days or weeks?
Would it survive the loss of revenue or loss of reputation? If you can’t service your customers, where would they turn? Perhaps a competitor who is better prepared to withstand a business interruption?
Continuity of business is an imperative to most large businesses; even small to medium businesses now recognize that the inability to recover from a disaster could mean the difference between survival and failure. Businesses both large and small all contribute to the health and vitality of communities in many ways. Whether it’s the small restaurant that provides Meals on Wheels to the elderly or the multinational corporation that provides telecommunications and internet services, planning for the continuity of your business is essential.
Being able to travel to and access your facility is critical to that survival and this is why the CEAS program exists. Due to recent disasters, government realizes now more than ever the important role the private sector plays in economic recovery and overall community recovery. The CEAS program is a partnership with government that allows businesses to provide credentials to select employees essential to business recovery. For government, it creates a process that helps take much of the guesswork out of who needs access past the yellow tape without limiting law enforcement’s discretion.
From Fortune 500 businesses to local, small companies, businesses that need to recover choose CEAS.
Who Benefits from using the CEAS program?
CEAS is a win-win proposition for everyone involved.
Private Sector Benefits
- Quickly determines how the business was affected by the event and can take steps necessary to mitigate further damage to facilities and essential business processes.
- Allows private entities to get a head start on recovery activities.
- Allows businesses to execute their business continuity plans.
- Creates a valuable, actionable partnership with government, public-safety agencies.
CEAS gets the right people to the right places at the right time!
Enrollment is simple, affordable, and will increase your organization’s disaster resiliency. Countless organizations of all types that take the continuity of services and operations seriously use the CEAS program.
Why Should Governments Use The CEAS Program?
"The CEAS Program makes it easier for businesses to recover when a major disaster occurs."
- Joseph F. Bruno, Former Commissioner New York City Office of Emergency Management----------------
During and following emergency events, governments must balance public safety, economic viability, and community sustainability. Regardless of the emergency, there is always a need to sustain private sector business to provide essential goods and services, or community lifelines, to the public.
Each emergency is unique, some requiring evacuation of the population, others require people to shelter in place, which poses the most complex issues. A community sheltered “in place” still requires essential goods and services to survive that can only be provided by private sector businesses. These emergencies can be a double-edged sword. If businesses are unable able to operate, it emperils the economy, and the community suffers. If businesses are permitted to be fully operational, the risks to health and safety can be compromised.
Public safety agencies are responsible for enforcing executive orders and, in most cases, face the difficult task of deciding who can travel to, access, and operate their business in a specific local. The phrase “essential employees only” is often used loosely by chief elected officials, with little or no definition or means to identify those individuals.
The CEAS program provides all the tools necessary to provide a cost-free, turn-key solution that helps the government at all levels to exercise informed access management decisions by identifying essential employees of critical business.
Public Sector Benefits
- Promotes better, more informed access management,
- Provides a tool for law enforcement to effectively manage access to restricted areas and screen essential private-sector employees,
- Speeds recovery to` privately owned critical infrastructure,
- Aides in sustaining communities by promoting the continuity of essential goods and services,
- Improves the private sector’s ability to provide community resources and lifeline services and promotes the return to normalcy,
- Non-exclusivity, CEAS can be combined with any number of accepted external access requirements defined by the government
- CEAS Is turn-key, no cost for the government to use