Sept. 11 tragedy pushes companies to see vulnerabilities in security, data storage, emergency plans
The images of the World Trade Center towers being hit and then collapsing will probably never fade from memory for those who saw the events unfold on Sept. 11.
But in addition to the huge emotional impact that Americans as a whole have felt for their country and the victims of the attack, people — especially business people — are using the tragedy to better prepare their companies in case of disaster.
Among the issues:
Local companies providing services to those situations have noticed increased interest in their offerings since Sept. 11; many directly credit it for increased sales.
"I’d like to attribute some of that to Sept. 11 even though those decisions take about 90-180 days once the companies identify that they want to move forward," said Jim Dziak, president and owner of MicroTek Systems in Milwaukee. "So we had a significant upshot in business through the end of the year.
"They all know what they need to do and there are really three motivators out there: disaster recovery, privacy, and then cost efficiencies," Dziak said. "And I would have to say that disaster recovery has moved up in ranking, but at the top of the list is still business efficiency and ROI."
"Well, everybody saw all those papers flying around [in the World Trade Center disaster]," added Guy Gliesberg, director of professional services at MicroTek. "But people are somewhat naïve. It’s sort of like disaster recovery — ‘Until it happens to me’ — they put it off."
MicroTek’s main focus is document management and security; it also helps client companies identify network weaknesses to outside attacks. Privacy, in the age of new laws like HIPPA, is the rule, not the exception, and companies have to ensure that sensitive documents, like employee records, are kept safe.
The firm has partnered with a disaster recovery company to broaden its scope of services for customers. "It works out really well for us because the whole document-management thing ties into disaster recovery and security," Gliesberg said.
"We’re seeing a pick-up in the call volume," said Gary Hewitt, owner of Scan America, a document imaging, forms processing and Web development company. "But in the context of the aftermath of Sept. 11, there’s a lot of things that come into play, not the least of which is the electronic archiving of their critical business records."
Hewitt estimates business has picked up between 15-25%, although qualified that by saying most companies take between six and nine months to decide to go ahead with his type of services.
"I think Sept. 11 was a watershed event," Hewitt continues, "and I think in their efforts to decide what to do as an enterprise, people are going to identify different ancillary technologies that they obviously weren’t looking for [prior to Sept. 11]. … I would characterize this as people ‘discovering’ a new business necessity, and that can take the shape of electronic records management, forms processing, Internet access to their data, disaster recovery and automated back-up solutions. All those touch on how to react properly and responsibly from an enterprise level."
Other companies are coming up with innovative strategies should disaster strike in southeast Wisconsin. Integrated Network Solutions is providing off-site back-up facilities for everything from e-mail and voice mail to data. The company is also providing disaster recovery facilities for affected companies’ staffs through its partnership with the Sheraton in Brookfield. That way, if a building is lost, key staff members can be up and running in a matter of hours, and they will have access to their data, phone lines and voicemail, too.
Norlight Telecommunications recently introduced its Business Continuance Solutions, which provides customers with a way to recover critical network systems after an unexpected outage.
"The financial burden is not the only worry when dealing with outages," said Kamlesh Sethi, of Norlight, in the press release announcing the company’s new services. "If downed systems cause communication problems with customers and investors, a company’s image could be tarnished, and a tarnished image can be much harder to restore."
Be prepared
Other companies looked at Sept. 11 and asked, "Would our employees know what to do in an emergency?"
For Racine-based RTC Technologies, the answer was a definitive "no," according to Dan Curley, an account manager with the firm. In lieu of what happened on Sept. 11, RTC’s owner, Paul Baumann came up with the idea of working on a business continuity plan that would limit the firm’s downtime.
RTC designs, builds and maintains network infrastructure, among other things, so data storage is a top priority for the firm, as it should be for others, says Curley. But what’s critical to one company may not be to another. It’s a self-evaluation process.
"It’s the mentality of: If our building is wiped out, what would it take to be back up and running in the least amount of time?" Curley said.
When Baumann described RTC’s business-continuity planning process to a few clients, they all seemed interested in doing a similar thing as well, but asked whether RTC could do the planning for them. The company is currently working on making that one of its expanded services.
In doing its business-continuity plan, management discovered that most employees didn’t even know where basic safety equipment like fire extinguishers and first aid-kits were. "That was a big surprise," Curley said. The company employs less than 20 people. If nothing else, Curley said, make sure the employees know some of the basics.
Teleconferencing
After Sept. 11, business travel dropped dramatically, with companies like Miller Brewing mandating that no employees fly on business until it was deemed safe. With travel restricted, companies were forced to look for new ways of meeting.
Companies like MCSi, which installs high-tech video conferencing equipment, saw a boost in sales, but surprisingly, the boost came from medium-sized businesses, not huge corporations. The reason, Barbara Aschom, Wisconsin branch manager, says, is that large companies already have video conferencing facilities of their own. MCSi’s new facility in New Berlin has a video conferencing room that it rents out. She estimates rentals on the video conferencing room have more than doubled compared to last year.
"It seems that companies are looking at it for the long-term in greater numbers than they were before," Aschom said. "… The mid-level-size companies are looking at it much more closely than they had before."
February 1, 2002 Small Business Times, Milwaukee
