Recalling the Lessons from Y2K

by Ed Yourdon

I've been rather amused by the number of Y2K-related e-mail messages I've received since 11 September -- though I dearly wish that the events that prompted those messages had never occurred. But as several recent articles have observed (see, for example, George Seffers' article in the 25 September issue of Federal Computer Week, entitled " Y2K may be model for defense," http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2001/0924/web-home-09-25-01.asp), many of the emergency plans and procedures that were created for the Y2K rollover may have helped the companies affected by the World Trade Center (WTC) attack to recover their IT operations, and may serve as a foundation for coping with future attacks. And while Y2K was an intangible, ephemeral problem whose existence we couldn't explain or illustrate, the threat of terrorism is now very real and very tangible. As I write this column on the evening of 30 September, I'm still digesting today's interviews with the US Attorney General, who says that additional terrorist attacks in the US are "likely."