On May 15, 2009, at 12:00 AM, RECMGMT-L automatic digest system wrote:
Snip from:

> From: Jesse Wilkins <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: May 14, 2009 3:45:53 PM EDT
> Subject: Re: RAINdrip: When Google turns to Gobble-Gobble...
>
>  That's why so many
> organizations like, oh, the District of Columbia, Genentech, New  
> South Wales
> Education Dept (1.3 million seats), Valeo, Hamilton Beach, Arizona  
> State
> University, Northwestern University, and the University of Southern
> California have all gone Google.

I am surprised that these organizations allow their use of this  
service to be so widely known.  The first rule of attacking someone is  
to know where they store their valuable assets.

Also, the larger the volume of information in these repositories, the  
higher value target they are to hackers. One of the primary  
deficiencies in our society right now is the consolidation of large  
volumes of information in ever larger repositories.  We have seen  
fires that have destroyed 1.8 million boxes of records, a fire  
destroying 1.2 million boxes, another with a loss of 800,000 boxes and  
one fire destroyed over 1 million computer tapes.  Every fire was  
thought to be arson.  Over 300,000 arson fires occurred last year  
according to NFPA and the losses were over $5 billion.

But today, these volumes of information are dwarfed by the  
concentrations we see with the newest mega records centers and the  
huge Cloud storage terminals. Homeland Defense is warning of  
electromagnetic type attacks where information will not easily be  
transmitted after an attack.  An outage of a day or a week will be  
possible.

Records managers should be discussing the Business Resumption plan  
based on a lack of wireless, cellular and other communications.  Can  
your business function if you are forced to run on 20 year old  
communication models.

At a recent conference one of the speakers talked about the security  
exposure of the Cloud approach.  The risks to that technology have not  
even been defined yet.  The IT Community is taught to think in terms  
of hackers and viruses but they ignore the most simple forms of  
security.  Recent fires at colocation centers, thefts where they  
breach the space and just steal the computers and the threat of real  
security problems. The first notice you may have an all out attack may  
be the fact that huge information repositories have been destroyed,  
thus allowing the attacker more time to empty account, transfer  
amounts multiple times to hide the trail and distribute the gains. All  
of this is possible where banking balances are just 0's and 1's

In banking, a bank officer had access to the wire transfer codes and  
transferred $11 million to a number account in Switzerland.  The bank  
never knew he stole the money.  It was only by the thief bragging to a  
friend that he was found out. Imagine if you could have access to such  
large amounts of information by simply bribing an inside employee. We  
are not talking about high school hackers when billions of dollars are  
at risk.  Foreign countries have agents who can make this sort of  
thing happen.

Real records management should have a plan to truly protect the  
organization from themselves.  Allowing the total outsourcing of  
corporate information assets will eventually lead to a disaster on the  
scale of the recent financial meltdown.

Think about it, the least technologically advanced countries benefit  
in a disrupted state. This makes it a terrorist dream.  And a  
nightmare for............

Hugh Smith
FIRELOCK Fireproof Modular Vaults
[log in to unmask]
(610)  756-4440    Fax (610)  756-4134
WWW.FIRELOCK.COM


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