London firms need to wake up to Olympics’ travel and IT threats

The UK suffered economic losses estimated at about £1.2bn per day in the severe weather period leading up to Christmas of 2010 which was caused by a breakdown in the transport system, failure of supply chains and extreme pressure placed upon bandwidth capacity as workers attempted to carry on from home—just the scenario that faces London businesses during the Olympics. UK telecommunications giant BT estimated that during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, one in three organisations found they didn't have enough communications network capacity when they needed it most because of the games and this led to huge complications and costs for local businesses. On March 14 FICO, a provider of analytics and decision management technology, hosted a Business Continuity Institute (BCI) Forum event designed to help UK companies prepare their risk assessment, resilience and continuity planning for the Olympics. The meeting included an evaluation of cyber attacks and the impact on the payments market, which have emerged as a focus for Olympics preparedness.hideIn November of last year, the Financial Services Authority, the Bank of England and HM Treasury conducted a market-wide exercise that tested UK financial institutions' preparedness for a cyber attack. Following the report on this exercise published in February of this year, the three organisations and financial institutions have stepped up efforts to strengthen protection against cyber terrorism that could disrupt the UK payments system. "The market-wide exercise showed that the banking community is prepared to handle some aspects of a cyber attack, but must shore up other areas," said Derek Mason, founder of Simple Business Continuity Solutions, a speaker at the meeting. "I encourage all managers to think about whether they have adequate, practical plans in place to overcome the immediate communications issues and continue urgent business following a major incident," added Mr Mason. And from Monday February 6 to Thursday February 9, thousands of UK government officials were told to work from home or on flexible hours as part of Operation Stepchange, an effort designed to test the running of Whitehall during the Games in July. But while the focus of government and industry leaders may be on the high profile perceived physical or cyber terrorist threat and the ability of the government and the City of London to continue to play its core role in global financial markets, others are more concerned about the impact of the games on London’s wider business community. Kathryn Hurt, Head of Projects, Olympics for MWB Business Exchange, the UK’s second largest provider of serviced office space, told Commercial Risk Europe that the impact of the games on travel and IT demand has been hugely underestimated, or more often simply not spotted, by small and medium-sized businesses all over London. She said that if UK businesses fail to receive and understand the message that the Games could cause serious disruption to both communications and the availability and efficiency of staff then the whole event could leave a ‘bitter taste’ in the mouth of London PLC. MWB has been running a training seminar programme to help London businesses prepare for the Olympics attended by employees of large corporations and smaller businesses in recent months. It believes that most businesses have underestimated the enormity of potential risks from home working—especially the demand from tens of thousands of people trying to remotely access intranet systems and use local internet service providers (ISPs) during the Games at the same time because of the travel difficulties. London 2012 and the Cabinet Office, supported by the Mayor of London and the Home Office, have formally recognised the problem and recently issued a joint statement that read: “It is possible that internet services may be slower during the Games or in very severe cases there may be drop outs due to an increased number of people accessing the internet.” The statement continued: “In addition, ISPs may introduce data caps during peak times to try and spread the loading and give a more equal service to their entire customer base. However, this has not yet been confirmed by these ISPs and we hope to have more information nearer to Games time.” According to a recent survey carried out by BT of 1,200 firms in the London area, four out of five organisations are confident of maintaining service and security during London 2012, but only a third (34%) have assessed the impact of internet risks such as a cyber attack. MWB pointed to a BT survey carried out in 2010 that found that nearly a quarter (23%) of Vancouver businesses ‘had issues’ with their internet network during the 2010 Winter Games because of a surge in demand and more than a third wished they had increased their bandwidth capacity. But according to the survey, only 32% of private sector and 18% of public sector organisations currently plan to increase internet network capacity. MWB has identified three major problems. First, internet traffic will be extremely high during the Games and ISPs at a local level may not be able to cope with the increased demand in traffic from home-workers and the smart phones and tablets of up to 800,000 people travelling to the Olympics each day. Second, information security will be a major problem with the addition of many new home workers and the potential for viruses to be passed to the corporate network from home. Third, firms will possibly have to invest in extra IT infrastructure to improve support coverage for home workers. MWB reckons that an average firm with 20 employees may have to spend more than £20,000 to be compliant. The company therefore recommends that businesses follow five steps: · Carry out a practice day with remote workers to stress test internal servers · Check home workers’ computers to ensure there are no viruses or malware · Increase HQ’s internet bandwidth to cope with extra demand of remote logins · Ensure home-workers’ smartphones have sufficient 3G coverage at peak times · Understand the broadband requirement for each home worker and calculate the cost. Ms Hurt said: “We welcome the government preparing for the Olympics but we understand a lot of businesses have still not faced up to the massive risks presented by the Games. What could be a great opportunity for business could turn into huge nightmare. “Traffic hotspots have received a lot of media coverage but we’ve heard very little about potential internet traffic problems. The government has even admitted in its document that there could be reduced internet speeds and even drop outs in service. That’s why it’s crucial businesses urgently review their business continuity plans and test their systems as soon as possible. “Businesses should also seriously consider looking into flexible business space to provide temporary solutions outside the transport hotspots around Liverpool Street, London Bridge and Canary Wharf. There’s also a major risk in that home workers are unable to work effectively due to internet over capacity and being out of the office environment for over a month. Businesses may find it far more cost effective and productive to relocate for the Olympics,” she added.

London firms need to wake up to Olympics’ travel and IT threats

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