Verizon: Reconnecting - ' Lesson 4'

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: Don't Wait for the Unimaginable">

Lesson 4: Don't Wait for the Unimaginable

Before 9/11, Verizon's security operations group had launched a "site-hardening" project to improve physical security at its central offices, which now total close to 1,800 buildings. The terrorist attacks dramatically accelerated that project, according to Roger Kochman, Verizon director of security operations.

Under the project, the group looks at everything from access by individuals to the facility, to the ability of the building to withstand a physical assault from the outside. Remedies range from improving surveillance with closed-circuit cameras and better background checks for employees to retrofitting buildings with bomb-resistant outer casings.

Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Verizon installed temporary concrete barriers to block access to some of its larger buildings.

Verizon has identified its 100 most active network centers and is shoring up physical security at those installations first. It plans to have its top 200 central offices hardened by 2007, at an average cost of about $1 million per building.

keep data moving if a network failure occurs.

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