Call for action on undersea cables
Source: Agencies |
April 21, 2010, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
INVESTORS should urgently diversify the web of undersea cables that serve as the world's information and banking arteries to address soaring demand and piracy concerns and reduce the risk of catastrophic outages.
So says a report by a multinational research project that calls for the building of global backup routes for the submarine network that carries almost all international communications, including financial transactions and Internet traffic.
The report's main author, Karl Rauscher of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, an international professional body, said changes should be made "before we have to learn the hard way."
"This report is trying to have a September 10 mindset, where you actually do something about what you know on September 10 to avoid a September 11 situation," Rauscher, who was an adviser to the United States government on cyber security after the September 11 attacks, said.
The report says that the current probability of a global or regional failure of the network is very low, but "not zero."
"The impact of such a failure on international security and economic stability could be devastating. There is no sufficient alternative back-up in the case of catastrophic loss of regional or global connectivity.
"Satellites cannot handle the volume of traffic - the available capacity is not even close," the report says.
It cites the "cable-dense" Luzon Strait south of Taiwan, the Strait of Malacca and the Red Sea among several "chokepoints" that funnel important cable paths together.
So says a report by a multinational research project that calls for the building of global backup routes for the submarine network that carries almost all international communications, including financial transactions and Internet traffic.
The report's main author, Karl Rauscher of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, an international professional body, said changes should be made "before we have to learn the hard way."
"This report is trying to have a September 10 mindset, where you actually do something about what you know on September 10 to avoid a September 11 situation," Rauscher, who was an adviser to the United States government on cyber security after the September 11 attacks, said.
The report says that the current probability of a global or regional failure of the network is very low, but "not zero."
"The impact of such a failure on international security and economic stability could be devastating. There is no sufficient alternative back-up in the case of catastrophic loss of regional or global connectivity.
"Satellites cannot handle the volume of traffic - the available capacity is not even close," the report says.
It cites the "cable-dense" Luzon Strait south of Taiwan, the Strait of Malacca and the Red Sea among several "chokepoints" that funnel important cable paths together.
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