One, Two, Many Katrinas

It's easy to point the finger of blame at the criminally incompetent boobs who run FEMA, the disaster of a federal disaster agency. But when a crisis strikes your network, the odds are that you'll be as unprepared as they were.That's the finding of a study by AT&T, which found that as a general rule, enterprise networks don't have disaster, backup, and contingency plans.The study revealed that almost one third of U.S. businesses don't have continuity plans, and almost 40% said it wasn't priority. More than 40% don't have off-site back-up or redundant servers. And amazingly enough, almost a third don't have even basic network security measures.If Katrina doesn't convince network managers it's time to get their plans in order, nothing will. I wouldn't want to be in the network manager's shoes who doesn't adequately prepare for disaster -- it'll lead to a quick and ugly exit.