Terrorism: Impact on Outsourcing

In recent times, terror attacks have been happening all round the globe incessantly. Few years back, it was widely considered that the terror attack/terrorism is a third world phenomenon. However, with 9/11 all that has changed.
Terror got a new face after 9/11. The world today has come to understand that terror has no boundaries. The Indian parliament attack in 2001, Bali bombings of 2002, the Madrid train bombings in 2004, the Beslan massacre in Russia in 2004, the London bombings of 2005, the Mumbai train bombings of 2006, the Glasgow airport attack of 2007, are all testimony to one fact: that terrorism affects the entire world and is not limited to any one country or area.
Post 9/11, there has been a concerted effort from all the international leaders to act together in fighting terrorism. However, in spite of all the actions taken by the international community, terror continues to raise its head with impunity. The recent terror attacks in Mumbai prove that not much progress has been achieved in the fight against terrorism.
In fact, in the year 2008, there have been more than 20 confirmed terror attacks in India including the Mumbai attack. This trend has forced many people outside India to think that India is not a safe place to do business. In fact, many businesses that have been approached for outsourcing raise this concern as a reason for not utilizing outsourcing as a tool in their business strategy.
However, it is pertinent to note that these kinds of attacks have no influence on outsourcing at all!
A business in say California suppose outsource its accounting to India, suppose in Bangalore. Normally, the outsourcing vendors in India use the IBackup servers for the transfer and storage of the backup files. These servers are based in California and use 128bit encryption. A person having the login credentials to his/her account can access the account from any part of the world.
So, let’s suppose that at any point in time there is an unfortunate event of terror attack in India which destroys the office premises of the outsourcing vendor, the data is still safe.
All the outsourcing firms in India follow the principle of taking back ups of their work on a daily basis.
In fact, businesses in US who have been outsourcing to India or who want to outsource to India should insist on daily back up of their data.

There is another angle to this debate of terrorism impacting outsourcing. The attacks of 9/11 have shown as that terror is not limited to any one part of the world. It can strike even at the most secure places. Supposing there is an unfortunate event of terror attack in US which affects the office premises of a business. In such an event, will it not be better if someone has the data secure & safe somewhere, so that the day the business is ready with the redone infrastructure, the data also is available! This is something that is possible with outsourcing.
In fact, because of outsourcing, the technology has advanced to a level where data is no more needed to be converted into paper form. It is available in the virtual world! A terror attack may wipe out the physical data but it will never be able to touch the virtual data!

Besides, terror attacks are primarily done to scare people, to instill fear in the minds of people and to adversely affect the normal way of life. By stopping outsourcing just because of terror attacks would tantamount to bowing in front of the designs of the terror perpetrators.
It will therefore be in the better interest of the world and the business community if outsourcing is just looked at from a strategic point of view and not link with terror attacks.