Business continuity is of great importance to organizations and continually attempt to find better ways to protect the availability of information through technology. There are three business drivers that have brought this issue to the forefront of management and boardroom discussions. They are the rising cost of downtime, available technology to combat security breaches, and an overall heightened risk awareness. By analyzing some of the costs of major power outages and terrorist acts, one can see how big an impact that downtime has on an individual organization as well as the economy. Some companies have been looking at some of the most recent solutions to disaster recovery by using data compression software and data replication using IP versus physical tape backup. The increased awareness has been apparent in the formation of a national cyber security task force to help organizations understand the importance of including information security into their corporate governance framework.
             Information security is the biggest piece of business continuity and can be seen in current issues of internet and network security. The Internet is plagued by e-mail SPAM and viruses costing companies hundred of thousands of dollars in lost employee productivity as well as lost data and information. One can also look at the damage estimates of some of the biggest viruses over the past 6 years to see the impact that this security breach has on the worldwide economy.
             Lastly, network security has become a primary concern as organizations are looking to create their own virtual private networks (VPN) to connect remote employees and distant offices to secure information. Other methods of keeping networks secure is the use of WORM discs, which allow users to write data to a disc that is not re-writeable for security purposes. Lastly, companies need to find ways to require employees to periodically delete old files and other data to help save on ...