A CIO Discusses Her Experience With Hurricane Katrina

By Jan Rideout
Sat, April 15, 2006

CIO — I loved living on the Mississippi coast. I arrived in December 2001 to be CIO for a $3 billion division of Northrop Grumman, which builds military warships in Pascagoula, Miss., and New Orleans. As a native New Yorker and having just moved to Mississippi from Northern California, I thought this would be just another stop in my career.

I was wrong.

After living on the Mississippi coast for about a year, I told my boss (and everyone else who asked) that I never wanted to move again. I had found a great job in a small-town atmosphere devoid of traffic and pollution. And my home was directly on the back bay of Biloxi, Miss., with incredible views of the water and wildlife all around. Paradise found!

But all of that changed on Aug. 29, 2005, with the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. On the Saturday evening before the storm hit, my husband, David, and I discussed evacuation plans. Having driven 10 hours to Tennessee (with our three dogs in the pickup truck) just six weeks before to escape Hurricane Dennis, we were both reluctant to do the journey again.

We considered staying at a local motel, but when we awoke on Sunday morning, Aug. 28, the storm was looking too dire for us to remain in the area. I went online and found a hotel in Bainbridge, in Southwestern Georgia, that would take our dogs. By 11 a.m. we were fighting the traffic driving east.

My staff had spent Friday and Saturday doing their usual heavy-weather preparation. I have about 230 people in Mississippi and Louisiana, and they’ve been through the drill many times before: taking backups, sending them to one of our data centers in Dallas, shutting down servers, covering them up with heavy-duty plastic.

Monday, Aug. 29, was an extremely long day—sitting in our tiny motel room, watching CNN and the Weather Channel to get a sense of how bad the storm was. My BlackBerry had no signal in Bainbridge, so I couldn’t contact anyone either by phone or e-mail. When we saw our hometown Comfort Inn (which was where we originally planned to stay) with part of its roof blown off, we knew it was going to be bad. We just had no idea how bad.

The Damage Done

By Tuesday afternoon, I was on a plane along with David to Dallas, where my boss, Northrop Grumman CIO Tom Shelman, is located. After settling in to our new "hometel," I dashed into our Dallas office to join the efforts to set up an IT command center. The Pascagoula center was flooded; it had an eight-foot watermark in the building. The New Orleans data center, while intact and on generator power, was disconnected from the rest of world due to extensive problems with the public infrastructure. In addition, millions of dollars of information technology infrastructure—networks, phones and desktops out in the Pascagoula shipyard—had been destroyed.

Continue Reading

As Active Directory's role in the enterprise has drastically increased, so has the need to secure the data. Gain insight on creating repeatable, enforceable processes that reduces administrative overhead and enables robust, customizable reporting and auditing capabilities. Brought to you by NetIQ.
Custom malware frequently goes undetected. According to Forrester Research, the best way to reduce risk of breach is to deploy file integrity monitoring (FIM) tools that provide immediate alerts. This white paper has been brought to you by NetIQ, the leader in solving complex IT challenges.
Did you know that 80 percent of threats to an organization come from the inside? The threat from insiders is often overlooked in organizations worldwide. This white paper from NetIQ, discusses key technology solutions that help to prevent and detect insider threats.
This white paper from Forrester Research Inc., helps break PCI into understandable components. Security and risk professionals will gain knowledge and insight into creating a compliant and secure IT environment. Follow these four proactive steps now before your next audit. Brought to you by NetIQ.
Streamline, simplify, and automate compliance related activities; especially those that impact multiple business units. This white paper from NetIQ, outlines solutions that will help your business gain the maximum return on investment possible while aligning your compliance programs.
This white paper describes the business challenges and opportunities that are driving interest in Identity Governance while discussing considerations your organization should make to help achieve project success.
Learn how Gartner's criteria for next generation IPS helps organizations achieve effective threat prevention despite changes in network communications, new applications, and changes in the threat landscape.
3 minute Flash video - overview of the need for and value of Configuration Control.
Cloud deployments are playing a critical role in propelling innovation for many companies. At the same time security has become the #1 one of the top concerns for IT and business leaders as they migrate into the cloud. In this webinar, learn from Accenture discusses how to recast the cloud as a "fresh chance to rethink your approach to security."
As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.
Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.
Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business
Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter
  1. View all Newsletters | Privacy Policy
Resource Center