The vulnerability of our communications

The intentional sabotage of four fiber-optic cables in San Jose and San Carlos, California earlier this week clearly points out the vulnerability of our communications infrastructure. This act of sabotage underscores the need for disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities at all levels of the network, but certainly for our email systems and the other applications that run on top of it. There are a variety of on-premise and hosted services that can make email virtually immune from all but the most widespread acts of sabotage and terrorism. While many organizations have not built disaster recovery into their planning, particularly because of the current economic climate, they should.

There are a number of disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities you might want to consider. On-premise systems that will automatically failover to backup servers, particularly if there is some geographic separation between the primary and secondary systems, is a good choice. So are hosted services that will provide the same functionality, but without on-premise infrastructure. Using a hosted email service that has multiple, geographically separate data centers offers a robust level of continuity, as well.

Whatever lessons you take from this week's act of sabotage or terrorism - call it what you want - at the top of the list should be the critical need for continuity in your email and other critical systems.