Stories about: SUNGARD

Last week, I was an observer at a hands-on cyberattack simulation workshop organized by disaster recovery vendor SunGard at its facility just outside of Chicago. Taking part in the exercise were representatives from the local community, including workers or officials from retail, health care and government organizations. Each participant was assigned to one of five teams -- IT, operations, information security, sales and executive management -- within a fictitious $1.2 billion gourmet food manufacturing company. The idea was that a cyberattack would unfold, requiring participants to respond to it in the most effective manner.

In the past, most enterprises defined a disaster as an act of nature--a hurricane, tornado, flood or fire that wipes out their ability to conduct business as usual. Today, with worldwide networks, 24/7 customer call centers and Web applications, a common electrical failure could spell disaster when communication is interrupted in the supply chain, online transactions are halted or networks are down. Online resource Dictionary.com has even added "business failure" to the list of calamitous events that define a disaster.

Protecting data is not just a job for technologists. It also takes physical security and business continuity experts.

Welcome to a world where projects fail, computers crash and secrets escape — and you don't have to be the fall guy.