World Cup won't derail IT staff

IT professionals are just like their counterparts in other professions and love to watch Super Bowl or World Cup Football on television, leading to concerns that the onset of the soccer tournament would cause the pace of global business to slow down to a crawl, writes TMCnet.

Tufin Technologies conducted a survey in connection with these concerns, among 241 UK IT professionals and 263 US IT professionals. For the majority of the IT professionals on both sides of the Atlantic, job comes first.

Tufin's UK sample was asked: Should they experience a major IT disaster during the final of the World Cup, would they delay fixing the problem? Tufin's US sample was asked the same question, but in regards to the Super Bowl. Some 87% of UK respondents said they would forego the match to fix the problem and 80% of the US respondents said they'd stop watching the Super Bowl to fix the disaster.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, Janet Napolitano, has announced the adoption of the final business continuity standards for the Voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Accreditation and Certification Programme (PS-Prep), reports Security Info Watch.

This is a major milestone in DHS' implementation of the programme, which was recommended by the 9/11 Commission to improve private sector preparedness for disasters and emergencies.

"Private organisations across the country from businesses to universities to non-profit organisations have a vital role to play in bolstering our disaster preparedness and response capabilities," said Napolitano.

Deploying cloud computing, whereby a company's data storage can be housed on virtualised servers and off-site, is a popular option for businesses seeking a business continuity package, but experts believe the key to a successful strategy is accessibility of data, states Rackspace.

This technique makes sense when formulating a business continuity strategy, as a company's data can be hosted off-site. This means that in the event of the destruction of the original data, the backup will remain in a safe alternate location.

However, simply putting information in the cloud may not be enough, according to some industry commentators. "Business continuity, even with the cloud, isn't simple," said Zeus Kerravala, senior VP of the Yankee Group. "There's a lot more to it than merely copying data to the cloud."