Blayne Sucks

Sometimes I have to try actively to avoid a “me too” post after Bruce Schneier’s latest article goes up on Wired. However, I will indulge myself this time because his latest article is about disaster recovery communications. I feel very strongly about this and Bruce speaks so eloquently about it that I would be remiss in not posting a link to his thoughts.

His basic premise is that whatever you do to plan for disaster recovery works regardless of what caused the problem. Natural disaster? Check! Security breech? Check! Random malfunction? Check! Unknown design flaw? Check! This is what makes backing up the data on your computer such an important thing. It is useful regardless of how you lose your data. Also, the cost associated with making a backup is really low.

Schneier’s article isn’t about backing up computer data though. He focuses on improving communications between first responders. Any emergency responder will tell you that the most critical elements in responding to a situation are timing and communication. We can’t make more time, so improving communications during disaster recovery is low hanging fruit that I would hope politicians of any stripe could agree on. There may be some local disputes about protocol or hardware, but in the end these seem pathetic because of the big picture.