Latest Issue : November 2024
Solar Flares Cause Important Business Risk
By Peter Aggus
In 1859, a massive coronal mass ejection event scored a direct hit on the earth. The resulting electromagnetic pulse wreaked havoc on world telegraph circuits for hours. A similar event will likely wipe out all unprotected technology infrastructure for many months. Activity is increasing with the peak of the 11-year cycle expected in 2025.
Out-of-Date Plans: A Report from the Field
By Guy Robertson
Last month I audited the IT Disaster Response Plan (DRP) for a government organization. The plan had been created in 1993. Even by the standards of that decade, sections of the plan were incomplete, unclear, and generally inadequate. Awkward…
Defensible Security
By Ellen Koskinen-Dodgson
No one can afford perfect cyber-security protection – it gets ever more expensive to increase your level of protection. So what is the right balance between protection and cost? The province of British Columbia has answered this question with their Defensible Security Framework, a set of guidelines and tools to identify the minimum level of protection that an organization should attain.
Depricating Fax
By Kristin Kiewitz
By the 1980s fax had transformed our business life. It was cheap, fast and secure. With the move to IP telephony, regular fax transmissions could no longer be guaranteed to work reliably, so rather than offer an equivalent or better service, some government agencies and businesses began to withdraw fax service. This effectively pushed their customers back in time to ‘snail mail’. This is not OK.