The Westfield Group's Australian unit represents one of the country's top 25 most valuable brand names, worth an estimated $635 million in 2013, according to the London-based consulting firm Brand Finance P.L.C.

Although the value of Westfield's brand in Australia and around the world is not by itself an insurable asset, the global real estate management company is acutely aware of the potential consequences of an event that damages its reputation in the eyes of its insurers, business partners, tenant retailers and shoppers at large.

“When we look at our enterprise risk management framework, I focus a lot of energy on the risks that have the potential to tarnish the brand that we so jealously protect,” said Eamonn Cunningham, Westfield's chief risk officer. “At an enterprise level, the notion we try to put forth is a sense of responsibility for personal behavior. When all of our people within Westfield are tuned appropriately to that notion, we know we're heading in the right direction in terms of managing our reputation.”

Those who work closely with Mr. Cunningham said that the preservation of Westfield's brand and reputation is a theme that appears to underscore the entirety of its global risk and insurance management program.

“They're a very proud and very brand-conscious organization,” said Lyndon Broad, vice president and operations manager at FM Global in Sydney.

From his perspective, Mr. Broad said the Westfield Group's determination to mitigate any potential harm to its reputation is particularly evident in its strict, enterprise-wide adherence to the completion dates it sets for construction and redevelopment projects.

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“Their loss mitigation approach takes a lot of pride in setting a date for a property to open or reopen a property, and then meeting that date as expected,” Mr. Broad said. “It would take a catastrophic event to prevent that from happening, and that's how they go about their business overall.”

David Bidmead, Marsh L.L.C.'s New York-based global multinational client service leader, said Mr. Cunningham's focus on protecting Westfield's brand on a global scale was a primary contributor to the successful construction and operation its $2.7 billion Westfield Stratford City shopping center in Stratford, England, adjacent to the site of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.

Mr. Bidmead said the fact that Westfield Stratford City incurred fewer than 20 minor personal injury claims and not a single security breach or adverse reputational event during the games — despite more than 13 million visits in the two week span — was a testament to Mr. Cunningham's “professionalism and his ability to pull the team together.”

“The entire focus for the company was how to make its contribution to a successful London games, and to make sure that Westfield Stratford was seen as a welcoming and safe environment so that people will return to their home countries and still be talking about how fantastic the Westfield center was,” Mr. Bidmead said.

“That was one of my primary motivations for nominating him (for the Business Insurance awards program), because his contribution to that success will always stand out in my memory,” he said.

Mr. Cunningham said his department is also keenly aware of the growing constellation of digital threats to Westfield's reputation, particularly the myriad risks related to social media.

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“Social media demands that you be aware of its power,” Mr. Cunningham said. “If you use it in the appropriate way, you can harness that power to your advantage. If you ignore it, you do so at your own peril.”

During the 2011 London riots, Mr. Cunningham said 24-hour monitoring of social media platforms enabled Westfield to identify a picture of a store in the company's London mall — doctored to look as though it had been looted — meant to encourage rioters to storm the shopping center. Within minutes, a Westfield employee inside the mall was able to post an unaltered picture of the store in question.

“The message was, "Don't bother coming, because this store has not been looted,'” Mr. Cunningham said.

“That wasn't accidental,” he said. “It was the result of a carefully engineered plan that included active monitoring ... should something come up. If we had let that original post go unanswered for another hour, it might well have been a much different outcome.”

In the immediate aftermath of a last November's live-shooter incident at the Westfield Garden State Plaza shopping center in Paramus, N.J., Westfield staff used the mall's branded Facebook and Twitter accounts to direct the public on where family members could reconnect with evacuees, as well the evacuees themselves on recovering cars or personal items left at the scene.

“We got a quite a bit of positive feedback on how we handled that aspect of the response,” said Bryan Gaus, general manager at Westfield Garden State Plaza mall.