Financial Times, April 8, excerpts from a (scary) letter from Ross Anderson, of Cambridge University's computer laboratory:
....Even more serious effects may come from the wide variation in preparedness between different countries and regions.
...the phone companies in most Far Eastern and Middle Eastern countries appear to have spent nothing, and awareness of the problem is low to non-existent. The same appears to hold for other critical sectors such as water, electricity, oil, chemicals, banking, food distribution and healthcare. While Unilever may have spent Stl.300m. and Barclays Bank Stl.250m., I have not been able to find any large Asian or Arab organisations, outside Hong Kong and Singapore, that have made similar provision (or indeed made any provision at all).
So either British and US companies have squandered billions on bogus consultancy, or there is a real prospect that countries such as Japan, Korea and Saudi Arabia will suffer extensive infrastructural collapse.
Although some of these countries may make a heroic last minute effort to beat the bug, it is unlikely that all of them will. For skill-poor countries such as Saudi Arabia,it may be already too late... |
