During the winter of 2007, TJX Corp. and JetBlue, two companies with relatively untarnished reputations, found themselves in the midst of corporate crises. TJX was forced to acknowledge that hackers had breached its data security systems, stealing nearly 46 million customer credit card records from its popular T.J. Maxx, Marshallsand HomeGoods stores. A few weeks later, JetBlue took a beating when severe weather in the Northeast wreaked havoc with air travel, stranding several JetBlue planes and hundreds of passengers on runways for up to 10 hours in some cases.

The stock prices of both companies suffered. TJX was threatened with class action suits and regulatory action, while JetBlue suffered the humiliation of losing its BusinessWeek top customer satisfaction position on the cover of the March 5 issue. Even though the crises were relatively short-lived, the companies are only just now emerging from their wake–both finally beginning to once again outperform their industry group. As Warren Buffett once said, "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it."

As senior executives begin to embrace the need for implementing effective risk management strategies, many too often ignore what may well be the most potent risk an organization faces. A recent Harvard Business Review article made the point that 70% to 80% of a company's market value comes from hard-to-access or -quantify intangible assets such as brand equity, intellectual capital and goodwill, making organizations especially vulnerable to anything that damages their reputations. Not only is reputation one of the most difficult assets to quantify, it is also probably one of the hardest to protect and manage.