IT’s high-alert response overlooks corporate sites

The widespread availability of sensitive information on corporate Web sites appears to have been largely overlooked by IT and security managers responding this week to the Department of Homeland Security’s warning of a heightened terrorist threat against the financial services sector.

Freely available on the Web, for example, are 3-D models of the exterior and limited portions of the interior of the Citigroup Inc. headquarters building in Manhattan — one of the sites specifically named in the latest terror advisory issued by the DHS. Likewise, details of the Citigroup building’s history of structural design weaknesses, including its susceptibility to toppling over in high winds, the construction of its central support column and the fire rating of the materials used in the building, are readily available on the Web.

senior intelligence official at the DHS, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the recent capture of al-Qaeda computer expert Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan in Pakistan yielded a computer filled with photographs and floor diagrams of buildings in the U.S. that terrorists may have been planning to attack.

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