More Need for Security : A Computer Collapse Could Close Company

FORT WORTH, Tex. —  A computer tape in a trash container on the second floor of the company caught fire. By the time an employee called the fire department, the fire had spread and the computer crashed to the first floor.

The firm, with no contingency plan for recovery of its lost data base, went bankrupt.

An excited guest at a company New Year’s party decided to sound the fire alarm at midnight for effect. Instead, he hit a “dump” switch, filling the computer room with fire-preventing Halon gas. The loss to the firm as a result of inadequate computer security ran into the millions.

Pressing Need

A group of high-school computer “hackers” in Milwaukee tapped into the telecommunications network of 21 companies last year.

Louis Scoma Jr., president of Data Processing Security Inc. of Fort Worth, uses these examples to emphasize that operational and physical security for computers has become a pressing need as more and more firms and agencies computerize their operations.

“Computer use has become so widespread it is now the heartbeat of corporations and the data base the lifeblood. We have determined that in this age of sophisticated terrorism, one sure way to cripple a corporation or a government agency is to go either for the heartbeat or the lifeblood.”

Scoma, a former NASA consultant and computer adviser to corporations like IBM and Texas Instruments, said a University of Minnesota study has shown a firm relying on a computer will lose more than 90% of its business within 10 days of a computer collapse and many of them willnever reopen their doors.

His firm, founded in 1969 as an independent management-consulting firm specializing in computer security, now serves more than 600 clients in the United States and Europe.

The services provided by Data Processing Security include access control systems, surveillance, fire suppression and sensors, support utilities, temperature monitors, remodeling of computer centers, new computer facilities for temporary relocation, risk analysis, master plan and backup modes, data restoration and centers built exclusively for government agencies.

Scoma said his firm has determined 80% of the agencies that rely on computers have no contingency plans in the event of a computer wipeout caused by an accident, sabotage or natural disaster. Others have minimal to adequate security.