KPN working on a possible threat of significant service disruption from Electro Magnetic Pulse caused by Solar Activity

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Jaap Halfweeg, Chief Information Security Officer at the Dutch-ownedtelco KPN, joined with senior executives attending the CorporateExecutive Programme’s Global Risk Summit at Gleneagles in Scotland inMay to debate trends and anticipate the major risks that will impactinternational business over the next 12 months.

Halfweeg warned the group that experts predict that in 2010, we willexperience a solar peak which will be the strongest measured during theprevious 50 to 200 years. This Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) has provenin the past to affect power grids and communications. For obviousreasons KPN has been putting effort into researching this phenomenon inan attempt to become more precise about the timing and affects on itsown networks and telecommunications services. Halfweeg advised that wecan expect only a few hours warning of the EMP strikes that will occurin 2010/11 and that KPN is investigating what measures should be takento minimize impact (if any).

The Corporate Executive Programme (CEP) (www.globalcep.com) is anaffiliate of FIRST (www.first.org) the world’s leading incidenthandling Forum. The CEP brings together senior executives from diversefunctions across organisations, to discuss the impact ofcross-functional risk on their organisations.

Companies and organisations represented at this year’s GleneaglesGlobal Risk Summit included Diageo, Intel, HSBC, KPN, Bank of England,CitiGroup, Sun Microsystems, Verisign, UC Group, Forrester Research,Mitsubishi UFJ, CISCO, Open Text, Imprivata and the UK’s Department forTransport.

Please send any inquiries tojohn.lyons@globalcep.com.

June 12, 2007 19:25 GMT+01

News Source : KPN working on a possible threat of significant service disruption from Electro Magnetic Pulse caused by Solar Activity