http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/articles.php?art_id=693 Interview with George Hender Head of Financial Services Exercise February 11, 2008 By Linda McGlasson Managing Editor BankInfoSecurity.com The word of the year so far is "pandemic." Just last week, Information Security Media Group released the results of its inaugural State of Information Security survey [1], which in part found that, of all prospective disasters, U.S. financial institutions are least prepared for a pandemic emergency. And then just days later, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) issued an interagency statement on pandemic planning for financial institutions. In light of all the attention being paid to pandemic preparation, we caught up with George Hender, chair of the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council (FSSCC), which last fall teamed up with the US Department of the Treasury and the Financial Banking Information Infrastructure Committee (FBIIC) to complete the largest-ever pandemic exercise for the U.S. financial services industry. Following are excerpts of our conversation with Hender, who was attending a recent symposium on pandemic planning in Washington, D.C., where the results and model of the FSSCC/FBIIC/Treasury [2] exercise was on display for other interested governments to review. Q: First, what was the focus of this pandemic symposium, and what was presented? Hender: At the symposium we released information to a dozen nations around the globe, The symposium attendees include government and industry representatives from Europe and Asia. Singapore plans to do their own pandemic exercise later this year. The information they're getting at the symposium will prove invaluable to them in structuring the exercise, but also why it's important to do an exercise like we did here in the United States. (See related story on Pandemic National Exercise) Q: What are some of the future considerations for the industry and institutions coming out of this exercise? Hender: One of the big questions coming out of this exercise was what do we do next? We have a group called the pandemic forum, which FSSCC formed, and had members from FSSCC and also from the public sector including critical interdependency areas, such as health care, telecommunications transportation systems, A number of things came out of the national exercise that we feel need further attention. We've taken several of these points back to the Pandemic Forum to say these are some of the things that seemed to work well, and these are the areas that need more work to improve. The forum will be charged with that responsibility in finding solutions and will move forward to find them. The areas that need more work include the whole area of interdependencies, particularly in the area of telecommuting. How will this work? It still needs further investigation and more work. [1] http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/survey.php [2] http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/articles/pdf/Pandemic_Flu_AAR.pdf [...] ___________________________________________________ Subscribe to InfoSec News http://www.infosecnews.org/mailman/listinfo/isn
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