Terrorism, the biggest threat to business continuity

CORPORATIONS IN the US live in fear of an Avian flu outbreak, according to a Array Networks, a business continuity vendor, which estimates bird flu would cost the American economy $2 billion in lost productivity. Hurricanes are the second biggest worry, while terrorism has been relegated to third place.

Meanwhile, in the UK, the big topics of conversation among City risk analysts are Al Qaeda, the rail unions and the weather.

"In America, the biggest fear is that people can't get into the office," explained Jim Greenway, VP of marketing for Array Networks. "In the UK, the big worry is, what if the office isn't there any more."

Greenway wouldn't be drawn on why Avian Flu (regarded by many in the country as a myth) is the biggest cause of panic, whereas the terrorists who brought down the World Trade Centre have been downgraded to third place in the risk analysis league table (according to research conducted by Array among its clients).

Experts say Al Qaeda is wrecked as a centralised organisation, according to a report in the (US) National Review. It hasn't killed a single American in five years after America's ferocious crackdown, unleashed after 9/11. Conversely, Britain, its ally in the war on terror, is more vulnerable to terrorist attacks than ever, according to Array's own analysis. "Terrorism is the biggest fear here now," says Kevin Thiele, Array Networks' regional sales director.

So we've made America safer, but stirred up a hornets nest over here?

Array Networks weren't commenting on that (not really their place is it?) but they do have some clever technology for automatically rebuilding your company, after it's been devastated. Whatever the religion that threatens your company, be it biblical (floods, hurricanes, lightning), Marxist (rail strikes) or just plain old misinterpretation of the Koran, Array Networks claims it can help your network to regenerate itself.

Even if an entire data centre is destroyed, the servers have been replicated elsewhere. Then the system finds people its workers on the Internet, and configures them into a virtual private network. "Every node on the network, every user account, can then be recreated, simply by accessing the company web site, typing in the SSL VPN passwords, and waiting for the system to reconfigure the new PC," said Ian Kilpatrick, chairman of Array Networks' UK distributor Wick Hill.

So a system can rebuild its own network, organically, like the monster in that Arnold Schwarzenegger film, then? Why didn't you give the service a more potent name, like The Terminator? "Perhaps we will," said Thiele. "But we'll continue with the Business Continuity Flex License Plan for now."

Array Networks is looking for UK resellers with a good security background. I hope they've done a better job of simplifying the concept though. µ