On Thu, 30 Oct 1997, Dan Matei wrote:

> Eight Pentium personal computers - more than a third of the computers of the
> institution - the newest and most powerful, the Internet server of CIMEC
> included, together with a telefax Minolta, other electronic equipment - were
> stolen from six rooms. The local and exterior data networks were savagely
> destroyed and the cables dismantled. The paper archive and the furniture
> were vandalised.   50 CD-ROMs with original programmes were taken away. The
> restoration of what remained from the computer network, the recovering of
> the destroyed applications and programmes, the Web pages and databases will
> take many weeks of hard work.

The issue of protection of the informatics infrastructure of
an organization is an old one, and in businesses that have a
long tradition with the use of "computer centers", many "EDP
auditing" and security protocols are well-understood and
usually practiced.

Since the advent of the proliferation of personal (and
departmental and desktop business) computing, however, the
attention given by the many newcomers to computing
_operations_ to system and resource integrity, and to
protection from failures, accidents, vandalism, industrial
espionage, etc., has been mostly lacking, I believe.

Ask any number of installations what their "backup/recovery"
and "security" and "archiving" and other such operational
protocols are, and if they are being diligently practiced,
and you'll usually be appalled. This is a cost of doing
business in e-world that is seldom being adequatedly
budgetted for, and sooner or later, many will be stung by
the false economy.

I have no idea what the particular situation was/is with
respect to CIMEC, and do not wish to imply _anything_ wrt
their operations. I only make the above observations as an
attempt to alert every installation/business that _their_
operations very possibly require some serious auditing to
determine how "safe" their information equity is. The
equipment is easily replaceable (with some funds). The
information lost can be irreplaceable, and will often have a
value of hundreds or thousands or more times the physical
installation replacement cost.

Where are your backup tapes/cartridges/disks stored
(Off-site? No!? Uh oh). When did you last capture an image
of your business's information wealth (last night?  No!?
tsch, tschh).

Peter