Vaughn, Ontario
For the past two years, Michael Coladipietro has served as director of risk management at Longo’s, a Canadian-owned organization that operates full-service grocery stores across the GTA as well as through the website www.GroceryGateway.com. For Coladipietro, the risk spectrum in grocery retail is wide, both in frequency and severity, so it takes constant diligence to mitigate risks. “Each year we invite tens of thousands of people into our stores, and have the responsibility to keep them safe and free from harm,” he says. “ Of course, retailers need to protect customer information, and data breaches are high impact. However, with high levels of connectivity between sites, automation of building systems, and the adoption of AI systems in retail, cyber attacks have the possibility of disrupting businesses in unlimited ways with catastrophic consequences.”
“Planning and prevention are the key to protecting people and assets”
To manage all the risks on his radar, Coladipietro considers one question: “Are we doing enough to avoid risk?” However, with the constantly evolving nature of the grocery business, how to best address risk mitigation has become increasingly challenging, he says. With risk transfer always present, Coladipietro is focusing on risk avoidance. “We’re doing this through emergency management business continuity planning. Environment changes are bringing issues of site inaccessibility to the forefront again, and global political unrest is calling greater attention to third party unavailability. But cyber threat prevention remains the top priority,” he says.
Looking back to the start of his risk management career in corporate security, Coladipietro learned through the process of earning his Certified Protection Professional designation that “planning and prevention are the key to protecting people and assets,” he says. “This is still my first approach and methodology in developing any risk management program.”
