Offering Shelter and Securityfor Technological and Business Assets
Toni Paolini
Time is long past since we had to protectour lives and only a few coconut trees from acts of God. It issaid that we now have close to 600 billion Dollars in assets toprotect and it would be a catastrophe to see all the efforts tobring the Cayman Islands to the point we are now vanish overnightfor lack of a national prevention, recovery and continuity planin case of a disaster hits our shores.
Most advanced countries demand that allfinancial institutions should have a disaster recovery/continuityplan in place and the plan is inspected by their Central Bankto check if it is sound and realistic. A lack of such preventivemeasures is heavily penalized.
In the Cayman Islands there is no such legislationand some financial institutions have their recovery plans in placeguided by the common sense of their managers or forced by theirown Auditors Department. In the United States the Federal Reserveissues norms and guidelines and they are updated from time totime depending on the advance of the technology. The disasterprevention and recovery programme of the pre-computer era of coursewas completely different from the actual speedy focused computerage.
The FEDs make sure that banks and key financialinstitutions have in place a Hot Site (for immediate or almostimmediate operation); a Warm Site (some kind of arrangement withother institutions or remote site to recover data and resume operations)and a Cold Site (which is nothing more than a very resistant vaultto store and protect documents and tapes).
Due to its size and being at almost sealevel, our country is vulnerable to some specific phenomena andthis peculiarity requires unique solutions. We need governmentregulations clarifying once and for all the legality of sendingtapes with information off Islands where the data becomes vulnerableto the scrutiny of foreign governments.
Also we need to have realistic guidelines about the physical protectionof information since most recovery plans are designed for airplanesevacuation of people and remote communications to transfer datato other locations off Islands.
According to Tony Paolini, Managing Directorof Shelter Island Ltd., the first line of defense against anydisaster such as vandalism, fire, flood, hurricane or earthquakehas to be very simple and at a reasonable distance from the mainplace of business (Hot Site). If the company is located in CaymanBrac the first recovery site has to be in the Brac. If the mainoffice is located in Grand Cayman, the first contingency planhas to be in Georgetown.
The reasons, he explained, are that mostof the time nothing really happens. The majority of threats fromhurricanes are thankfully never realized and people tend to becomecomplacent. No manager will keep sending people, documents andtapes (sometimes computers) off island if he/she has to explaintime and time again to the auditors the expenses incurred duringsuch false alarms.
Also, in case of fire or vandalism, it isnot realistic to move key personnel to a distant location sinceall documentation and vital physical files could still be accessedand recovered at the main building even if it out of commissionfor a regular work day.
Furthermore, a very sophisticate plan tendsto confuse people who are already confused by the event. "Ifyou where here, " he explained, "during hurricane Mitchyou will understand what I am saying. It was a total chaos atthe airport. Even if one had a ticket and a seat there was noguaranty that that person would fly out. There was one instanceof a chartered plane that came to pickup somebody, flying backcarrying somebody else that had offered double fare leaving atearful and angry passenger behind."
Of course, he explained, there should be an alternative to a localsolution (Warm Site) to recover from a catastrophe and that shouldinclude a contingency plan off island which he believes will morelikely will never be used.
Shelter Island, he concluded, is being createdto help Government and the business community in general to installtheir Hot Sites in George Town, at a walking distance from thefinancial center which will guaranty a continuity plan, in anyevent, without having to rely on sophisticated and sometimes dubiousplans to save and recover data.
One last thought, he said, in our specificsituation it is a necessary mandatory solution dictated by Governmentbecause the managers of financial institutions are temporary andwill be called back home after a few years abroad. It is understandablethat because of such turnover they have other priorities in mindand by the time that they are familiar with the Islands peculiaritiesand ready to implement changes it is time to go home and the cyclestarts all over again leaving the solution to the next person.
We must stress the need for Government itselfto check its contingency plans and make sure that Immigration,Police and financial records are safe and ready to be used inany event otherwise there will be irrecoverable damage to ourislands.