Virtual Options For A Real Emergency

Dec 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Liz Lancaster Carver

As threats and technology change, security leaders should look at how the company's “virtual” work environment capabilities support the changes should a shutdown crisis occur.

Many types of crises can compromise an organization's physical location. Any natural or man-made disaster that shuts down the physical work location of a business necessitates a backup plan for keeping the business in business, and teleworking may be one of the keys to accomplishing this.

Today, all companies have business continuity and contingency plans, and most include provisions for a “teleplan.” You may want to consider taking your plan a step further. In an environment with constant technology changes, are your solutions optimized for current threats?

In the September issue, Bob Brand, vice president of corporate security for Cox Enterprises Inc., wrote about pandemics requiring crisis leadership vs. crisis management. He highlighted the importance of planning for disasters well before a crisis rather than maintaining a purely reactive policy of crisis management. Testing to traditional flood and fire reactions are not enough. What can you do to better leverage your plans?

Start to consider the following questions:

• Can your remote access solution support the increase in remote users?

• What if the Internet service provider (ISP) is saturated? Can you implement phone and manual processes in the short term?

• Are all required applications capable of running over remote access?

• Are you going to use IPSec VPN or SSL VPN?

• Do all employees get company-hardened and compliant laptops or desktop systems?

• How will you control and protect data, especially if it is on home users' PCs vs. company PCs?

• How will the users input data into your main systems (i.e. businesses that require the ability to scan in documentation sent by customers to be loaded to system databases)?

Proving that you can become a virtual company by leveraging your reaction plans with provisions for current threats and technology can help save a company during a shutdown crisis situation.

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Liz Lancaster Carver is member services and projects manager for the Security Executive Council. Before joining the council she worked for Boston Scientific Corp. as manager of security integration and investigations. She has held positions with the Massachusetts Department of Correction, assigned to the Office of Investigations institutional internal affairs division; Applied Risk Management LLP as a senior technical consultant; and Astra Pharmaceuticals LP as security project leader. For information about the Security Executive Council, visit www.SecurityExecutiveCouncil.com/?sourceCode=access.

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