The Age of Terror

Advisory System, informing the general public of the level of national threat from international terrorists. One year after the 7/7 bombings which left 52 dead in London, Dr John Reid announced that: "Following a review, we have decided to inform the general public about the process and the national threat level, which applies to the UK as a whole. These pages aim to explain what threat levels are and how they are used. Information about the national threat level will be available on the MI5 and

Home Office websites from 1st August 2006." This morning's disrupted 'Airline Terror Plot' has seen the Mi5 Threat Level raised to Critical; the highest level. For more information click on these related links: 'Airline Terror Plot' Disrupted "Countering International Terrorism: The United Kingdom's Strategy" Mi5 Threat Level Mi5 Security Advice Home Office Security US Homeland Security

Riding the Heatwave of Global Warming In London, the Met Office issued  the first ever Level 3 heatwave warning while the rest of the UK, USA and Europe experienced record July heat following a winter when Russia, the Baltic States and parts of Scandinavia where gripped by the coldest winter in over 100 years. Just months before this, the USA suffered it's most destructive hurricane season ever.

Despite the views of a few remaining die-hard skeptics, global warming is the accepted culprit for this increasing climate chaos. Previously the concern of some government departments, the likelihood of global-warming-triggered crises is impacting on business contingency planning more than ever before. While absenteeism and reduced worker productivity are obvious costs of the recent heatwave, hi-tech companies were hit more directly. Rupert Murdoch's MySpace was out of action for a number of hours having been hit by heatwave-induced power-outages. Meanwhile, communications and IT giant Level 3 found itself crippled when state-of-the-art uninterrupted power supplies failed to live up to their name. These service interruptions had serious knock on effects leaving many companies with compromised operating capacity.

For more information click on these related links: Level 3 Power Failure MySpace Offline Met Office Heat-Health Watch Hot Weather Risks Great Russian Freeze US Hurricane Season

Blackberry’s UMTS Handset Rolls Out In the past two months, the new BlackBerry 8707v has become the first UMTS-enabled Blackberry throughout many parts of Europe and Asia and as far as Australia. Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) allows bandwidths of up to 1920 kbits/s. The handset allows users to surf the internet, send and receive emails or use other data applications at extremely high speeds, at the same time as talking on the phone. Related links: BlackBerry 8707v UMTS

GPS Snappy Tracking On a lighter note, Sony digital camera users will soon be able to log GPS information of the location at time of each photograph with an accuracy of up to 2m using the soon-to-be-released GPS-CS1. Not only will users be able to view a map, they will also be able to input  geographical coordinates into software applications such as Google Earth. Related links: Google Earth Stuff Magazine Online Sony

BC Buzz Did you miss last month’s Times Business Continuity supplement sponsored by us? If so, grab it on line at: www.criticall.co.uk/times/bc.pdf Criticall Comment Watch this space for forthcoming announcements about Criticall's Tertiary site, to achieve "the elusive Five 9s" guaranteed service availability. Making our flagship service 99.999% available is intended to coincide with soon-to-be launched BSI Standard on BC, called BS 25999.

Resource Corner Useful links and events for the business continuity professional Events Norfolk Annual Emergency Preparedness Study Day October 3, 2006 Business Continuity Institute Symposium October 5-6, 2006 Survive Crisis Management SIG October 11, 2006 Emergency Services Show 2006 October 19-20, 2006

Catching Corporate Bird Flu - A toolkit for Survival October 26, 2006 Industry Analyst Evening, presentation and dinner October 30, 2006 SIESO Annual Workshop November 6-7, 2006 Survive Annual Conference November 20, 2006 Links Survive Bapco The Emergency Planning Society Intellect UK SEISO The Business Continuity Institute Criticall Limited

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