Big business gets Trade Centre recovery money

Many top US blue-chip corporations received World Trade Centre small-business recovery grants from the federal government, reports the Washington Times.

An investigation by the newspaper revealed the Empire State Development Corporation ignored the federal definition of small business and adopted a much looser definition that applied to the Rockefeller Group, Dell, Morgan Stanley, The AA Group and the Bank of China.

At least $114 million - 20% of the total awarded under the Business Recovery Grant programme - went to companies that reported too much revenue to qualify under federal guidelines.

Remote working should no longer be considered an employee perk but a business necessity, according to IT consultancy, Frontier Technology, IT Voices reports.

The company believes that remote working is what sets apart those organisations that continued to operate through the disasters of 2005 including the Hemel Hempstead fires, Hurricane Katrina and the London Bombings.

Frontier suggests that all organisations should follow five steps to develop a business continuity contingency plan: Analyse the business; assess the risks; develop a strategy; develop a business continuity plan; and rehearse the plan on a regular basis.

An increase in co-location and disaster recovery services from US companies seeking affordable solutions for off-site backup and business continuity has been noted, has been noted in a Caribe statement.

Since the World Trade Centre disaster and the subsequent data loss, the importance of maintaining redundant backups of data both off-site and off-continent has been pushed to the forefront. These issues are often complicated by cost, language, international laws and distance.

Puerto Rico has been cited as a good US alternative, as it is a US territory, it is subject to the same federal laws as US states and the currency is in US dollars.