Internet chatroom helps keep City of London open

Does your business resumption plan have any out-of-band mechanisms in case some of your major systems fail? Even something simple as a published e-mail address not hosted on your own systems may be useful. Perhaps a Jabber server, or an IRC chat room somewhere?

A secret Internet chatroom run by Britain's financial regulators helped keep London's financial markets open after Thursday's bomb blasts, while financial firms activated security measures in case of further attacks.

A Bank of England spokeswoman said this was the first time the secure site had been used in an actual crisis situation since its creation in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.