ABSTRACT
In the late 1980s, a legal doctrine emerged that placed personal liability on an organization’s corporate officers for the protection of its automated systems and other information assets. Because of this legal liability for data loss, there has been an increased interest in business continuity planning, especially within financial institutions. For banks that participate in the U.S. Federal Reserve System, the office of the comptroller requires that boards of directors and bank management personally review and approve contingency plans that have been developed to safeguard their organization’s systems and data. In other industries, the courts have repeatedly held for customers in suits against disaster-stricken companies that neglected to safeguard critical corporate assets — including information — before a disaster occurred.
