Pace University Rebounding from the World Trade Center

Pace University Rebounding from the World Trade Center Disaster Copyright Barbara Cunningham, 2001. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

World Trade Institute of Pace University All Pace students and staff safely evacuated 55 th Floor, #1 World Trade Center

View of New York City from Pace University’s World Trade Institute

September 11 View from the Brooklyn Bridge of Pace’s downtown campus and World Trade Center disaster

September 11 Pace’s World Trade Institute destroyed Dorm Students safely evacuated from Pace’s downtown campus Command Center set up in Midtown— President, CIO, Executive Committee Pace’s downtown campus served as triage and communications center

September 12 Verizon’s 140 West Street facility heavily damaged Pace’s Internet connectivity failed because the University’s ISP rode Verizon (both primary and alternate routes)

September 12 Telephone service to lower Manhattan was lost Cell phones lost for a short time due to antenna destruction and cell overuse Dorm phone service on all campuses affected by Verizon outage

Communicating President’s Daily Status Updates l Posted to External Web site as well as Internal Web site l Produced labels and sent thousands of pieces of U. S. mail to constituencies (students, parents, faculty, staff and alumni)

CIO’s Daily Crisis Briefings

“A great plan, vigorously executed, is better than a poor or incomplete plan vigorously executed, and much better than a great plan, poorly executed, and much, much better than a poor or incomplete plan, poorly executed. ” Anonymous US Army Proverb

Lessons Learned Have smart, energetic people working for you Establish and maintain a good relationship with external providers Make certain that your ISP has primary and alternate routes that do not go through the same Dial Central Office or Major Internet Point-of-Presence or contract with more than one ISP

Lessons Learned. . Have your site completely independent of your campus. Contract with or identify a disaster recovery site, with multiple ISPs l Rent at least one rack for servers l Be sure that the independent site hosts either your primary or secondary external DNS Have strategic systems equipped with “dial up networking” access.

Lessons Learned . . . Make sure that you have Cable or Satellite TV access in all public gathering areas and potential crisis meeting places Maintain an accurate cell phone directory with University (and non-University) owned cell phone numbers If your Internet is down, be sure that you obtain and distribute Virus Signature updates using dial-up networking before the Internet returns!

Lessons Learned . . Maintain alternate (e. g. home) email addresses for students, faculty and staff Prepare a well-advertised non-Universityhosted web site to use to get the word out in the event of a catastrophic web page outage Have a few loaner notebooks with non. University ISP access

Lessons Learned . . . Be ready to extract snail mail rosters from your data warehouse for all conceivable University constituencies (e. g. parents of NYC dorm students) Have some toll-free numbers you can immediately “call forward” to telephone banks for “University Hot Lines”. Be able to publish these numbers via media and web

Next Step I. T. Central Facility, Briarcliff, New York Review, Rework and Expand Pace’s Disaster Recovery Plan and implement!

“For the September 11 disaster, I believe that we had in place an I. T. disaster recovery plan somewhere between great and poor or incomplete. Never-the-less, we did execute the plan vigorously, with notable success. I trust we will complete our disaster recovery plan and have a great plan ready, vigorously executed next time. Of course, we hope that there won’t be a next time, for any reason. Meanwhile, we continue to pray for the victims and the country as we go about the business of educating our students at Pace University. ” Frank Monaco, VP of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer Pace University, New York

Division of Information Technology www. pace. edu/doit Frank Monaco (cio@pace. edu) VP and CIO http: //www. pace. edu/doit/ciocorner/disaster_recovery/it_disaster_recovery. htm Barbara Cunningham (bcunningham@pace. edu) Assistant VP and Deputy CIO