• Animation shows how cities will cope with devastating earthquakes

    How do we know what damage will be sustained by a city located in an earthquake-prone region? Purdue University researchers have an ambitious idea: Create a mini satellite city to cope with the aftermath of such a catastrophe; Boilermakers have created a 3D fly-through animation showing what the city would look like

  • CIA: Utilities threatened by cyber attacks

    CIA says U.S. utilities are at risk for cyber attack; security experts said the CIA’s acknowledgment of the problem indicates how seriously they are taking it, as CIA policy had been not to disclose such things

  • Plague: The new Black Death

    Threat to humanity ignored, researchers warn

  • Metro Group, IBM lead Europe's largest RFID rollout

    IBM, German retailer Metro Group — the world’s fourth largest retailer — roll out Europe’s largest RFID project, using IBM technology; suppliers from China and Vietnam are already participating; health experts argue that implementing similar systems throughout the food supply chain would improve health and safety and protect consumers from tainted food; business analysts say RFID would increase efficiency and allow better management of inventories

  • Businesses should consider the risks of "presenteeism"

    It is not a good idea for sick employees to drag themselves — and their germs — into work; this could have costly impact on an organization, not only in terms of risking the spread of disease, but also in terms of diminished productivity, quality, and attention to safety

  • Eight-day IT outage would cripple most companies

    Survey finds that most companies could not withstand a regional disaster because they are built to overcome severe outages lasting only up to seven days; experts say companies must make the business continuity plans more robust so they endure outages of at least thirty days

  • Interim government review of U.K. summer flooding published

    Interim review addresses the issues of managing flood risk, groundwater monitoring, local and national planning and response, public information, and public preparedness; the Review draws seventy-two interim conclusions, awaiting further information and evidence before being put forward in firm recommendations next summer

  • What should business continuity expect in 2008

    What should business continuity managers expect in 2008? Implementation of new standards; development of new terminology; greater coordination with the surrounding community; progress toward more formal performance benchmarks; and a financial squeeze in the U.S. owing to the subprime mortgage crisis

  • AT&T: Disaster planning low priority for small business

    36 percent of smaller businesses (fewer than 100 employees) reported that business continuity planning is either not a priority or not important — compared with 27 percent of large companies

  • Katrina victims inundate Army Corps with trillions in claims

    The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers faces more than 489,000 claims for the damage and deaths in the post-Katrina flooding; one claim alone seeks $3 quadrillion in damages, almost all of it for personal injury; this is 3 followed by 15 zeros — about 250 times the U.S. GDP

  • 200 Quebec municipalities have no emergency plan

    Lack of disaster preparedness is not only a U.S. problem: In 2001 the Quebec government passed a law requiring all municipalities to have an emergency plan in place to deal with natural disaters; a recent survey finds that 20 percent of them do not have such plans

  • Accreditation program for labs which test body armor

    In the last three decades, the lives of more than 3,000 officers were saved by body armor; many, though, lost their lives or were injured when they were wearing ineffective body armor; NIST, Justice create program for accrediting labs which test and certify body armor

  • Bioterror surveillance uneven from state to state

    What is even worse than being a subject to bioterror attack? Answer: Being subject to such an attack in Mississippi; state is among six states scoring the worst scores on compatibility with CDC’s National Electronic Disease Surveillance System

  • Communication's last mile especially vulnerable to pandemic

    As much as 40 percent of the U.S. workforce would be unable to go to work during peak periods of an outbreak, “and you don’t get to pick which 40 percent that could be,” says Greg Garcia, DHS’s assistant secretary of cybersecurity and communications

  • Improving protection of customers' personal data

    The FBI says that hackers steal $67.2 billion worth of personal information from the data bases of U.S. companies every year, and the amount is only growing; with so much at stake, hackers will try to get some of it; here are five easy steps to bolster the security of customers’ personal data your company holds