Is Your Oil Spill Coming?

There are a lot of lessons that can be learned from the recent events in the gulf. Sure, there are the obvious ones, like avoid being a part of a man-made environmental disaster. However, there are also many of these lessons that apply to your IT program.

  1. It doesn’t matter if you are leaking oil or credit card numbers, when your company’s resources and assets leak to the ocean or the Internet, you are risking the future of your company.

  2. Even with billions of dollars in profits, it takes years to recover from a breach. Most companies don’t have the luxury to make a mistake. Therefore, mitigation and a response plan will help cover your assets if anything ever happens.

  3. Have a plan. BP has probably had a very good disaster recovery plan for hurricanes that hit their data centers, terrorist attacks, and pretty much every other situation that may happen to their mission critical assets. It is now obvious that they did not plan for a situation like this. Have you considered how to respond if one of your branch offices, remote workers, or maybe even a print or fax server were to become compromised? Even if you don’t consider every scenario, having a plan for how you will deal with the situation is the first step.

  4. Remember that compliance, while helpful, is not a substitute for security. Compliance proves you are following a checklist. Just like with the Heartland Breach, being told your compliant should never substitute for going the extra mile to be secure.

There are plenty of lessons to learn, and more lessons coming. Are you prepared for your oil-spill?


Eric Irvin
Wednesday 21, Jul 2010
Posted by Eric Irvin


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