A number of businesses evoked their business continuity
plans following the terrorist attacks in London on Thursday (7 July
2005).
Telecoms networks bore the initial strain with the government
imposing its Access Overload Control plan which shut down parts of
the phone network and allowed priority for emergency services.
Steve Mellish, head of business continuity at Sainsbury’s, and
chairman of the Business Continuity Institute, said the retailer’s
business continuity team sprang into action to oversee business
operations.
“Text messaging was more effective for the continuity team, and
our staff freephone number worked very effectively. Staff had the
numbers on business continuity cards – and information was updated
throughout the day. Our IT was unaffected because it is outside
central London,” said Mellish.
In the City, the London Stock Exchange said it evacuated some
staff, and some orders were deleted, but the trading system carried
on going without any technical problems.
London Clearing House, LCH.Clearnet, was evacuated and
operations resumed at an alternative site, after the series of
explosions on the London transport network.
Some financial firms, including Swiss banking giant UBS,
evacuated their City buildings and switched operations abroad, with
no impact on trading.
Other City banks including Goldman Sachs, including JP Morgan
Chase, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch said the blasts had no
impact on their business.
Lorraine Darke, a spokeswoman for the Business Continuity
Institute (BCI), said the institute’s members “are out there
working flat out, and have not reported back. The only problems
people have experienced have been with pagers and mobiles”.
NISCC, the National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre
– the government organisation responsible for minimising the risk
of electronic attack to the UK's Critical National Infrastructure –
said, “Following [Thurdsday’s] incidents in London, operators of
the electronic systems in the Critical National Infrastructure are
being advised to maintain their standard security procedures. The
threat of electronic attack remains unchanged, but NISCC continues
to monitor the situation.”
Security company MessageLabs said e-mail traffic had doubled in
Europe an hour after the attacks. The number of e-mails it monitors
for its customer increased from 500,000 legitimate e-mails to one
million.