David Jordan was four months into his job as chief information officer for Arlington County - the smallest county in the US and located just outside Washington DC - when he decided it was time to check the county's emergency operations centre (EOC).
He had already been trying to overhaul Arlington's minimal computer security. At the time, it didn't even use anti-virus software in its network. "Staff would send out a voicemail to everybody: 'We have virus in an e-mail. Don't do anything on your PC'."
As far as security went, they were starting from practically zero, he says. He wanted to put in a firewall and increase security levels and was getting "pushback", as he calls it, from the state of Virginia, which wasn't sure this fresh expenditure was justified.
The county is so small, he says, that his office manages not just the security for its computer networks but directs the entire emergency response system - fire, ambulance, police.
At that time, the biggest incidents had been snow storms and hurricanes. The emergency operations centre was rarely used and he thought he'd better check what was actually there, "just in case".
"Everything was stored away in Tupperware containers - old phones, some so old they didn't even work. We were going through everything to see what worked and didn't work."
He left late that night, after making sure the county definitely had a system that would work. One more job out of the way. It was September 10th, 2001. Next morning, he was talking to a colleague when news came on screen about the first aircraft hitting the World Trade Center in New York.
"I went down to the director's office and said: 'I think we need to turn on the EOC'." Shortly after, the third aircraft hit the Pentagon - in Arlington county. The first, and for a while, only respondents were the county's emergency services, scrambled over the EOC.
Everything has changed since, says Jordan. "We have some very strategic agencies that call Arlington home - the Pentagon, the Secret Service. After 9/11, critical infrastructure in the county became very important, including the cyberinfrastructure. We've come a long way since those days."
Now the county is loaded with "more sensors than you can shake a stick at", measuring radiation levels, for example.
The EOC now runs a mobile command vehicle with broadband video and microwave communication, all heavily firewalled and encrypted. Not the normal security concerns for a typical county office, he agrees.
On top of that, his office has all the security and network management concerns of county governments anywhere. It has an intranet and an external public website, employees accessing sensitive personnel and government files, mobile employees carrying laptops and, hence, sensitive information out into the field.
The county has worked with Symantec for some time, first to implement anti-spam software and gradually, more security management. Now, it is deploying "Hamlet", Symantec's "all-seeing" new product suite the company says can manage multiple security systems, procedures and regulatory compliance requirements from a central console.
"We're very excited about it," says Jordan.
