Beijing implements data recovery infrastructure

EMC signed a memorandum of understanding with the Beijing city government's information office to collaborate on its "Digital Beijing" initiatives, reports English People's Daily.

EMC will assist in developing a data recovery information infrastructure and set up business continuity as well as a backup centre and information security lab to ensure business continuity and information availability.

An attempt by nine counties in north-eastern Pennsylvania to encourage Manhattan-based financial services companies to set up business continuity facilities has not yet signed any clients and is competing with already-existing installations in New Jersey.

The Wall Street West project, as the state government is calling it, is based in the Pocono Mountains and is intended to provide business continuity facilities - including on-site employees - to New York-based companies in case of a natural or terrorist disaster.

The project has received $15 million in three-year grants from the federal government for training residents, and it expects to receive more than $10 million from the state to help develop fibre infrastructure over the next 15 to 18 months, according to Jim Ryan, director of outreach and network development for the project. The state is looking at the project to help revitalise the blue-collar area, he said.

Most firms do not have adequate plans to protect themselves from natural disasters or human error according to British Standards Institute (BSI) Publicly Available Specification (PAS) advisory paper, "IT Service Continuity Management Code of Practice", reports AccountancyAge.

Many organisations are operating under the dangerous illusion that they will never suffer a major loss of IT systems, or that such a loss will have a relatively low impact, research has warned such assumptions could prove disastrous.