IT officials emphasize need for emergency backup systems
Many government offices must do better at backing up their information systems to preserve important data and ensure “continuity of operations” in the event of a terrorist attack, several federal technology officials said on Tuesday. “We have not done all that much in this area, except for our national-level systems,” Robert Coxe, deputy chief information officer at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), said during a homeland security conference sponsored by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. “I think we have a lot of catching up to do.” Despite having effective backup capabilities for its largest systems, FEMA’s continuity-of-operations plan for many other systems is “very poor” and typically amounts to “a pile of tapes” containing archived data, according to Coxe. Full Story