Natural Gas Week – April 17, 2006
By John Sullivan

With memories of last year still fresh, energy companies along the Gulf Coast are rushing to prepare for the 2006

Atlantic hurricane season that many experts suspect will be extremely active. While energy companies race to secure physical assets such as rigs, platforms, refineries and pipelines, one Houston- based company is trying to get the word out that a company’s cyber assets can be just as vulnerable. CyrusOne President and Chief Executive David Ferdman said that the company has upgraded its data center in Houston. The roof had been rated to withstand a Category 3 storm and now should be able to handle a Category 5 storm with winds in excess of 150 mph.

“Regardless of 2006 hurricane activity, our facility prides itself on being the safest place in Houston to house IT infrastructure when disaster hits,” Ferdman said. “Even if only three Category 5 hurricanes have hit the United States in the last century or so, the fact is that no one has a crystal ball,” he said. “You are either ready at any given time or you’re not.”

All the major forecasters have said that the US can expect that the 2006 hurricane season will approach the record level seen in 2005. According to the Pew Center for Global Climate Change, 2005 was the first season to bring 27 named tropical storms since records were kept — which is about 150 years. As part of its preparations for the Jun. 1 start of the new hurricane season, CyrusOne has produced a lessons learned program involving the previous storm season and how it impacted the information technology part of the energy industry.

Strategically, Ferdman said there are six key areas that companies should prepare for: understanding the stakes; avoiding the technology trap; maintain executive participation; keep disaster recovery plans current; move sooner rather than later when storms threaten; and know the company’s disaster drill. CyrusOne Vice President Dan Vazquez said that every hour, day or week a company’s information system is down has a major financial impact.

“If people understand what the cost of downtime is, then they have the information and motivation they need to move forward and plan accordingly,” Vazquez said. “Many times, people don’t understand the costs associated with downtime so they have a tough time getting their hands around business continuity and disaster recovery.

Another problem is a total reliance on technology to save the day, said Dohsung Yum, director of IT Enterprise for NetIQ. In the CyrusOne report, Yum is quoted as saying that after Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, which flooded downtown Houston, the technology was OK. “But that wasn’t quite the case on the people side,” he said. “The building we were in wouldn’t let us back in without power. No elevators. No phones for tech support to use.”

The company shored up its physical plant so that it was ready for the 2005 storm season, but again, it was the human factor that had to be considered.

“Leading up to Rita, we flew a small group of order management personnel from our Houston data center to our San Jose, California, facility, just in case,” Yum said. “It was hard finding people to go. They were concerned about their families. They didn’t want to be far from home.” The company addressed that issue by setting up an alternate data center locally.

Ferdman said that in their research, one thing that did emerge was that many companies had detailed disaster recovery plans, but they were never acted on or the company had changed its direction. Other areas covered in the report include suggestions for having key executive personnel always “in the loop” when it comes to disaster preparation and recovery. Ferdman said that as the storm season approaches, it’s not the rig superintendent or tool pusher who are asking if a company is prepared, but executives in boardrooms and IT centers around the US and the world.

This article was originally published online at Natural Gas Week

Copyright © 2006 Energy Intelligence Group, Inc