Fat rats, #$@% squirrels and power vulnerabilities

A 'fat rat' that snuck into an electric substation in Stockholm this weekend and caused a three-hour power outage at its central train station harkens back memories of a gnawing squirrel that took down the Nasdaq Stock Market.

In 1994, when I was covering the financial services industry for Computerworld, a squirrel chewed through a power line outside of Nasdaq's Trumbull, CT data center. Nasdaq's backup power system failed to kick in and trading on the all-electronic exchange was disrupted for 34 minutes.

This wasn't the first time a squirrel caused problems at Nasdaq. Another troublesome rodent shutdown its automated quotation service for 82 minutes in Dec. 1987.

The 1994 incident represented the third trading disruption experienced by Nasdaq in recent weeks. Like others in the financial media, I wrote a story about the disruption. I think I can say with complete confidence that it represented the one and only time in Computerworld's 41 year history that we ran an illustration of a squirrel on the cover.

After the National Association of Securities Dealers (Nasdaq's parent) merged with the American Stock Exchange in 1998, I visited the Amex trading floor and Nasdaq's Trumbull data center with then-Nasdaq CIO Gregor Bailar. While in Trumbull, I was given a tour of the company's data center.

During the tour, a few high-level Nasdaq IT executives pointed out the various upgrades the company had made to its backup power supplies and data center operations in recent years. I mentioned the 1994 squirrel incident and one of the senior IT infrastructure executives who had been with the company for over twenty years looked at me as if I'd just invoked the name of Satan.

"If I hear one more story about that #@$* squirrel..." he chortled. He got his point across.

In fairness, NASD has come a long way with its backup planning and preparations. But as Stockholm's fat rat has taught us, it's the little things that'll get you.