AT&T in broad security drill
Large communication company to engage in a week-long disaster resilience and recovery exercise; Katrina showed the need for such exercises
AT&T officials are planning the company’s largest Network Disaster Recovery exercise over the next few weeks in Dallas. AT&T (NYSE: T) will dispatch a fleet of forty-three self-contained equipment trucks at INFOMART in Dallas from 8 to 15 February. There, managers, engineers, and technicians will test and evaluate how well the company can support its business and government customers in the event of a natural or man-made disaster. INFOMART is a technology community which houses forty-nine high-tech and telecommunications companies. It consists of 1.6 million square feet of office space.
AT&T has conducted similar exercises for the last sixteen years, but this will be the company’s most extensive. It is working to refine its business-continuity plan if a disaster or terrorist attack damages or destroys parts of AT&T’s network. AT&T has invested more than $300 million to its Network Disaster Recovery program since it began in 1990. The team includes specially trained managers, engineers and technicians from throughout the United States. AT&T’s disaster recovery team has been activated twenty-one times since being formed. It has worked to restore its network after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and, more recently, along the Gulf Coast following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
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