Listening to the steady flow of doomsday scenarios, you might think that the Business Continuity Planners Association and the Anxiety Disorders Association of America were running a 2-for-1 membership special. Threats of fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, landslides, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, power outages, chemical spills, killer bees, mold spores, and random paper cuts have fueled the drive to document response strategies and prepare for the unexpected, and have inspired a healthy growth in the anti-anxiety pharmaceutical industry.

Who are you calling chicken?

Enter H5N1 and the great bird flu (hype?). While scientific predictions have ranged from "Don't Panic" to "The Sky is Falling," you can't ignore the threat posed by this pandemic possibility. In a recent article in the scientific journal "Nature," authors in the article Strategies for mitigating an influenza pandemic suggest that "household-based [quarantine] coupled with reactive school closure could reduce clinical attack rates by 40-50 percent. More widespread [quarantine] would be even more logistically challenging but might reduce attack rates by over 75 percent." Disease attack rates explored in the article include scenarios with 100 percent of schools closed, coupled with 50 percent of all workplaces shut down. While the statistics supporting isolation bode well for the survival of the human race, is your business prepared for the unpredictable nature of human behavior during a pandemic? See more information, see the sidebar "H5N1 Avian Flu Virus Facts."

First cows, now birds?

Figure 1 shows a map of documented Bird Flu cases around the world. Now that the proverbial cat (or bird) is out of the bag, we must consider the reality of how the population at large will react to the first bird flu cases when they are exposed on the evening news. Do the words "calm and reasonable" come to mind, or were you thinking more along the lines of "panic and irrational"?

Lee Barken, CPA, CISA, CISSP, CCNA, MCP is a partner at CPA Technology Advisors, and Associate Director of the Center for Accounting in the Public Interest at San Diego State University. Earlier he was an IT consultant and network security specialist for Ernst & Young's Information Technology Risk Management practice and KPMG's Risk and Advisors Services practice. Lee writes and speaks on IT Audit compliance, wireless LAN technology, enterprise security and computer forensics. He is the author of How Secure Is Your Wireless Network? Safeguarding your Wi-Fi LAN and Wireless Hacking: Projects for Wi-Fi Enthusiasts. http://www.cpatech.biz, http://capi.sdsu.edu lbarken@cpatech.biz