My experience in Savannah, with folks who should have known better, proves it's human nature to underestimate a threat, no matter how emphatically the potential destruction of that threat is spelled out or graphically depicted. Put more simply, "It can't happen to us."
Yes, It Can
A friend in Savannah who'd always joined in the ribbing about disaster overplanning recently clued me in to Michael Barnett's blog, a geek survival tale about keeping DirectNic's ISP operations up and running in Katrina's wake. It should be required reading for anyone who's even slightly cynical about the necessity of planning for a catastrophe. After reading some of Barnett's entries, my buddy said what we'd both been thinking: "This could have been us."
Of course, here in Asheville, N.C., surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains, you'd think we'd be spared any effects of a hurricane some 650 miles away. But the fuel shortage caused by the shutdown of Gulf refineries and pipelines caused no small concern in our community. You can't roll police cars, fire engines, ambulances or sanitation trucks without gasoline. We made plans to conserve fuel so we could continue critical operations. This also meant testing automated notification systems to keep the workforce informed, and enabling remote operations on a larger scale than ever before.
Once we analyzed the provisioning requirements, we determined that we simply didn't have time to install a VPN client on every employee's machine, so we opted to use a Web-based service, GoToMyPC, with centralized management and good encryption, under a 30-day trial. (Ironically, I'd blasted the first iteration of GoToMyPC in this column--because it lacked management capability, but our technical services group assured me that the problem had been solved.)
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
