1. Year 2000 Project Outline Alex Khassin AM Computers

2. Y2K Project Goals 100% compliance cannot be achieved The goals are: –Raise the confidence level in the organization’s ability to operate effectively in the Year 2000 and beyond –Protect the organization from litigation by conducting a thorough and well-documented Y2K compliance effort

3. Y2K Project Phases - Five As Awareness Assessment (Internal and External) Action Advance Planning Audit

4. Awareness Senior management awareness and commitment Identify Y2K Issues for the company –Determine company needs & standards for date handling

5. Awareness, continued Staff awareness –Training on proper handling of dates –Training on the potential issues in data interchange between software with different date windows External awareness –Customers –Business Partners –Investors / SEC

6. Assessment (Internal) Pre-assessment: –Identify mission-critical or high-risk systems requiring more detailed attention. –Identify the systems, business processes, machinery, etc. that may be date-dependant. –Count and separate into distinct units that can later be assessed for Y2K readiness/compliance.

7. Assessment (Internal), continued Establish comprehensive procedures for collecting, documenting, using and updating compliance information supplied by vendors of products and services in question. Conduct comprehensive inventory using automated tools if possible of all units to create a list of risk factors.

8. PCs & Servers Risk Factors Hardware (BIOS, RTC, etc) Software –Operating Systems and Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) application software –Custom / Vertical industry software –Add-ins, plug-ins, 3d party modules for COTS software; Macros, batch files, etc. Data (Database, spreadsheet, etc)

9. Assessment (Internal), continued Produce & evaluate remediation options for identified problems with cost and timeline of implementation. Develop an Action Plan that includes contingency plans for business continuity should remediation efforts for a particular item not finish in time.

10. Assessment (External) Y2K problem has global proportions. Must analyze potential impact of failure of external factors important to the organization. In addition to obtaining Y2K-readiness information from all vendors / partners, contingency plans for critical infrastructure failure should be formulated.

11. External Factors Product suppliers Vendors of outsourcing services Key distribution / channel partners Financial institutions Critical Infrastructure –Power, Water, Communications, Transportation, Banking –Surge / battery protection should be reviewed thoroughly

12. Action The Action Plan will determine whether to fix, upgrade, replace, or even abandon non-compliant items. Compliance information obtained from the vendor is sufficient for most types of units but mission-critical, high-risk, and complex systems require real-world testing

13. Action, continued Automated tools should be used to verify that software on every PC is installed in accordance with vendor expectations for compliance and to lock down settings that will guarantee consistent date handling on all computers.

14. Action, continued Disabling the ability to install and run unapproved software and/or proactively monitoring any changes to important files on all computers is an important element of continual compliance for years to come.

15. Action, continued Detailed documentation of what it took to get to Y2K compliance is critical for Disaster Recovery and should also be incorporated into the contingency plans.

16. Advance Planning 100% readiness cannot be guaranteed. Plans should be made that detail operations in the absence of critical systems. Such plans should describe procedures and criteria for invoking, operating under and ending the plan.

17. Advance Planning, continued Occurrences of data with Y2K problems should be treated like viruses and isolated. Quarantining & limiting access to high- risk data in advance may be much more effective than inspecting all data for compliance.

18. Audit Conducting a post-remediation audit is an excellent way to verify that no important steps in this complex process were missed and that they were properly documented, thus helping to protect your company from legal liability.

19. Year 2000 Project Outline  Copyright 1998 by AM Computers 1040-B N. Dutton Ave, Santa Rosa, CA 1-800-579-2018 (707) 579-2010 http://am.net http://am.net