Friday, June 12, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
WHO Declares Swine flu a Pandemic. Now What?
From: www.csoonline.com
The World Health Organization has raised its pandemic alert level to 6, making swine flu the first true pandemic in more than 40 years. Here's what it means for your company.
WHO Declares Swine flu a Pandemic. Now What?
by Bill Brenner, Senior Editor, CSO
June 11, 2009
The World Health Organization (WHO) has officially declared swine flu the first pandemic in more than 40 years.
The news arrived with none of the panic that swirled in the air when news of the virus first emerged in late April. But security experts say there are still actions emergency planners should be taking to ensure order if later waves of the H1N1 virus prove more deadly.
By raising the pandemic level to Phase 6, WHO has confirmed that sustained human-to-human transmission of the virus is happening at the community-level in multiple countries. To date, the virus has appeared in 74 countries, including Mexico, the US, UK, Australia, Japan, and Chile. There have been approximately 28,000 cases with 141 deaths so far, though the move to Phase 6 does not necessarily mean swine flu is causing more severe illness or more deaths.
But it does mean the world is threatened by an unpredictable virus that could grow weaker or stronger with time. History has shown that pandemics often start with a mild first wave, followed in the fall and winter by a more lethal wave. The best example of this was the Spanish Influenza of 1918-19, which killed roughly 50 million to 100 million people worldwide.
Emergency preparedness experts say there's no cause for panic, but that history serves as a reminder that organizations should always be thinking about how to keep the machinery moving in the event something big and unexpected happens. [See: Now That the Hype Is Over, Keep Planning]
For emergency planners, there are both physical and cyber security challenges to think about regarding swine flu and other potential pandemic viruses.
On the physical side, private entities should be hammering out a game plan for who would do what and where if the government decided to restrict our movements to contain an outbreak, says Kevin Nixon, an emergency planning expert who has testified before Congress and served on infrastructure security boards and committees including the Disaster Recovery Workgroup for the Office of Homeland Security, and the Federal Trade Commission.
"Companies and employers that have not done so are being urged to establish a business continuity plan should the government direct state and local governments to immediately enforce their community containment plans," Nixon says. [Podcast: How to Prepare for a Swine flu Pandemic]
If the Federal government does direct states and communities to implement their emergency plans, recommendations, based on the severity of the pandemic, may include:
- Asking ill people to voluntarily remain at home and not go to work or out in the community for about 7-10 days or until they are well and can no longer spread the infection to others (ill individuals may be treated with influenza antiviral medications, as appropriate, if these medications are effective and available.
- Asking members of households with a person who is ill to voluntarily remain at home for about 7 days (household members may be provided with antiviral medications, if these medications are effective and sufficient in quantity and feasible mechanisms for their distribution have been developed).
- Dismissing students from schools (including public and private schools as well as colleges and universities) and school-based activities and closure of childcare programs for up to 12 weeks, coupled with protecting children and teenagers through social distancing in the community, to include reductions of out-of-school social contacts and community mixing. Childcare programs discussed in this guidance include centers or facilities that provide care to any number of children in a nonresidential setting, large family childcare homes that provide care for seven or more children in the home of the provider, and small family childcare homes that provide care to six or fewer children in the home of the provider.
- Recommending social distancing of adults in the community, which may include cancellation of large public gatherings; changing workplace environments and schedules to decrease social density and preserve a healthy workplace to the greatest extent possible without disrupting essential services; ensuring work-leave policies to align incentives and facilitate adherence with the measures outlined above. [Source: swine flu: How to Make Biz Continuity Plans, by Kevin Nixon]
On the IT security side, organizations need to be thinking about how to stay on top of things like log monitoring and patch management in the event of sickness among the IT security staff.
Kevin Coleman, a strategic management consultant at Technolytics, says companies should also plan for limitations on business travel and even bringing in extra cleaning crews and keeping employees at home if they complain of so much as a sniffle.
"Encourage anyone who feels the least bit sick to stay home," Coleman says. "If an employee can do all the work from home on company laptops and VPNs that they do in the office, there's no reason to have them come in. If you can limit exposure from the get-go, why wouldn't you?"
Meantime, Coleman said, companies should ramp up the cleaning crew activity that's already going on, mostly after office hours. Bringing in extra cleaning crews to wipe down heavily-touched surfaces like doors, walls, phones and keyboards is money well spent, he said.
"Employees can also do their part to limit the spread of flu by carrying around antibacterial hand wipes," he said, noting that some of his clients have already pulled back on the amount of business travel employees can do.
It's far from certain that we're in for a deadly 1918-style pandemic. Either way, security experts say going over the scenarios and building a game plan is time well spent.
© CXO Media Inc.
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Guide to Global Leadership: Two Recommended “Must Reads” for Corporate Executives
By Kevin M. Nixon, MSA, CISSP©, CISM©, CGEIT©
“The Age of the Unthinkable” by Joshua Cooper Ramo
Do not pass Go! Do not collect $200! Go directly online and buy “The Age of the Unthinkable” by Joshua Cooper Ramo. I have been telling everyone I know about this book and now I am writing about it too.
We can all agree, that each day we hear yet another discouraging news report on how something else unexpected has gone to hell in a hand-basket. Just this past November 2008, Alan Greenspan in testimony before Congress said “I’ve discovered a flaw.” The Congressman questioning Mr. Greenspan asked him to explain, and with much bewilderment Mr. Greenspan said that “using the vast knowledge he had accumulated of the last 40 years and on which he had based his most trusted decisions, was no longer valid.”
Hearing that from Alan Greenspan must have had the same impact as someone overhearing Warren Buffet say “oops, I only wanted to buy 10% of that company and I accidentally added an extra zero. Now I own 100%. Can I change that order?”
Here is some background on the author:
Joshua Cooper Ramo is the managing director at Kissinger Associates, one of the world’s leading geostrategic advisory firms and the former foreign editor and assistant managing editor of Time magazine.
Mr. Ramo has recently released an audio book entitled “The Age of the Unthinkable – Why the new world disorder constantly surprises us and what we can do about it”
Here is a brief section of the book’s introduction:
“Just a few years into a new century, we’ve arrived at a moment of peril that not long ago would have seemed unimaginable. All around us, the ideas and institutions that we once relied on for our safety and security are failing, and the best ideas of our leaders seem to make our problems worse, not better. A global war on terror produces, in the end, more dangerous terrorists. The fight to stop financial crisis seems to accelerate its arrival. Carefully negotiated peace plans produce less peace.
This wasn’t always the case. For decades, our engagement with the world was based on the seductive belief that there was a logical relationship between the power of states and the physics of change. But that traditional physics of power has been replaced by something radically different. Drawing upon history, economics, complexity theory, psychology, human immunology, and the science of networks we learn about a landscape of inherent unpredictability and remarkable possibility.”
"ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum
Most of what we really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, we learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand box at nursery school.
These are the things we learned.
And then remember that book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK! Everything you need to know is there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation, ecology, and politics and the sane living.
Think of what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and clean up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
Kevin M. Nixon, MSA, CISSP®, CISM®, CGEIT®, has testified as an expert witness before the Congressional High Tech Task Force, the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He has also served on infrastructure security boards and committees including the Disaster Recovery Workgroup for the Office of Homeland Security, and as a consultant to the Federal Trade Commission.
The Author gives permission to link, post, distribute, or reference the above article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author and to Information-Security-Resources.com
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Saturday, May 30, 2009
Susan Boyle 1st Runner-up 'Britain's Got Talent'!
Susan Boyle Fans can email Queen Elizabeth at: webeditor@royal.gsx.gov.uk Perhaps Ms Boyle will receive a special invitation to perform for her Majesty.
Susan Boyle lost Britain's Got Talent to the ten-person dance crew Diversity. "Lads, I wish you all the best," said Boyle graciously. It was a stunning loss. Boyle took second place in the voting.
Boyle chose to sing again the song that first brought her fame, "I Dreamed a Dream." Dressed in a blue gown and saying that this performance represented "forty years of doin,'" the Scottish sensation gave this final performance:
Given all the publicity Boyle received here in the States, it wasn't clear to many of us just how close the competition has been all along. To American eyes, the hip-hop dance-troupe Diversity looks pretty ordinary, don't you agree? But judge Simon Cowell hailed them as "the only act tonight I'd give a '10' to" and "sheer and utter perfection." Judge for yourself:
Diversity will perform before the Queen Elizabeth II in the Royal Variety Show and wins 100,000 pounds (about $159,000).
What do you think of the results? What do you think the future holds for Susan Boyle?
Piers Morgan's blog: http://www.officialpiersmorgan.com/
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