9/11: Attacks Changed the Way Companies View IT

IDG News Service — The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks led to scores of changes in how U.S. residents live and do business, and the IT industry was not spared.

The 9/11 attacks, coming just after the late '90s Internet boom, were a wake-up call for many IT managers who hadn't contemplated the possibility of their entire computing systems being destroyed without warning, some IT managers and company executives said.

"Many companies maintained their systems under the basic idea that they could reconstruct the systems with only minor interruption to the enterprise," said Keith Payne, IT security officer at Javitch, Block & Rathbone, a law firm with offices in Ohio and three other states.

Losses of technology and intellectual property on "such a large scale" were considered unlikely before 9/11, Payne said.

"Before 9/11, our customers did not heavily evaluate the possibility that the entire firm could cease to exist with no pre-indicators," he said. "We have made large investments in identifying all assets in the scope of how they contribute to the overall ability to operate. No longer are the days of backup tapes being moved off-site weekly; now mirrored systems are maintained with geographical separation."

Ten years after 9/11 cloud storage and disaster recovery remain high-growth areas in the IT industry. ABI Research predicted the global market for business continuity and disaster data-recovery products would grow from US$24.3 billion in 2009 to more than $39 billion in 2015. The open networked disk storage market grew 15 percent between the second quarter of 2010 and the second quarter of 2011, rising to $4.8 billion in revenue, according to IDC.

The 9/11 attacks were a "tipping point" for IT and U.S. awareness of terrorism, added Chris Caldwell, CEO and co-founder of LockPath, a vendor of risk management and compliance software. "Prior to the attack, American companies may have been prepared for natural disasters -- 2011 events like the D.C. earthquake, Midwest tornadoes and Hurricane Irene -- but most didn't have terrorist activity on their radar at all," he said. "Now, most companies -- especially those on Wall Street -- have taken a hard look at their business continuity plans and disaster recovery practices."

Vineet Jain, CEO and co-founder of cloud storage vendor Egnyte, points to 9/11 and later major disasters as leading to the modern cloud storage industry. The attacks showed that a single data center is more vulnerable than backing up data at multiple locations, he said. The attacks also led to a discussion in business circles about cybersecurity, with raised data security expectations from customers, he said.

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