One of my biggest concerns in the Internet age is the “rude awakening” Americans received on 9/11, and realizing how prone our computers systems are to nefarious deeds. Of those directly effected, they learned they didn’t have the communications diversity and redundancy that should have been in place. Many IT organizations though responded quickly and did an unbelievable job of rectifying the identified problems. As people have grown complacent though, they are most likely forgetting several important steps that a recent Computerworld article addressed:
Financial companies have taken these steps to protect themselves against another Internet outage:
* Set up dedicated networks independent of telephone companies in certain parts of the country.
* Negotiated more aggressively with communications companies to guarantee diverse routing.
* Separated data centers and communications centers more widely geographically.
Cf. Computerworld 21 January 2008.