Chubb CEO urges businesses to focus on risk management. (Property/Casualty).

Dean R. O'Hare, chairman and chief executive of Chubb Corp., called upon business leaders to reach out and forge public/private-sector partnerships with government agencies to address the threat against the nation's critical infrastructure and economy.

"Sept. 11 was the ultimate wakeup call...Suddenly, each of us had to look at our own company s security plans in an entirely new light' O'Hare told a gathering of the Business Roundtable.

In addition to taking steps to mitigate their own risks and recover from a potential disaster, businesses should share best practices and evaluate the efforts of others on which their organizations rely "to prevent a chain-reaction of disaster," O'Hare said.

He explained that best practices and threat information could be shared through industry groups as well as public/private-sector partnerships with government agencies, such as the Homeland Security team headed by former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office, Federal Emergency Management Agency and other emergency-management agencies at both the federal and state levels.

O'Hare advocated that every CEO make risk management a key issue. "This means instructing our finance, security, information technology, human resource and risk managers to work together, across the enterprise, to develop policies and procedures to minimize risks, as well as backup contingency and disaster-recovery plans," he said.

CEOs should make sure that their companies have a backup plan, O'Hare said. Companies should be able to continue operations after a disaster strikes; make provisions to communicate with all employees; and establish clear lines of authority, in the event that all the members of management team and board of directors are incapacitated.