Re: Operational Content only please.

[George William Herbert <gherbert () retro com>]

Todd Suiter <todd () s4r com> wrote:
> Also, the long term repercussions of today's events may well be
> staggering for this group, and our industries as a whole. [...]

Just a few off the top of my head:
1) Physical risk to facilities
        This is a nightmare, most of our facilities *suck*.
        Run an intrusion scenario against anything but the
        absolute primo colo facilities and you walk right
        in the door, and the primo ones are vulnerable to
        mild levels of professional active threat (rocket,
        bomb, wall breach, etc).  There is too much money
        in some of those buildings to treat this as lazily
        as we do now.  

2) Assured physically separate routing links
        The current situation is unacceptable.  We need to know
        where our circuits physically go, and when that changes,
        and have real options for physical routing.

3) Disaster recovery plans for facilities dropped into a hole in the ground
        My current contract had just deferred a major expansion
        on this issue.  They're in a building clearly identifyable
        on the San Francisco skyline.  I expect this to be a major
        reassessment starting tomorrow.  You, too...

4) Echelon / snooping / crypto privacy issues
        What sorts of likely issues will we see if there is
        enhanced government monitoring mandated as a result
        of this?

5) Services provider load-handling
        I was chatting with someone at cnn.com throughout the morning.
        They had to roll literally dozens and dozens of additional
        servers into service when the hits started rolling in after
        the incident was reported first.  It looks like everyone was
        able to hold on in both the network and the source provider
        side... but this needs a careful look for lessons learned.


-george william herbert
gherbert () retro com