How the World Cup will destroy your business

The end is nigh

Apocalypse alert It has come to our attention that many UK companies have not, despite stark warnings of the possible consequences, taken adequate steps to prevent their infrastructure from World Cup-induced meltdown.

Indeed, so great is the threat to the UK economy that it would not be an exaggeration to say that those companies which do not implement a catastrophe-prevention lockdown plan within the next three hours will most likely not be trading by the time England go out to Germany on penalties in a couple of weeks' time.

The economic apocalypse begins quietly enough: employees increasingly sidelining business-critical tasks to indulge in online fantasy football World Cup leagues; a noticable increase in workplace drunkeness as England supporters go into vital pre-match training ahead of tomorrow's clash with mighty Paraguay; a perceptible slowing of your network as the BBC's live broadband streams come online...

Fast forward two weeks: business-critical tasks are on indefinite hold because your entire workforce is either drunk, unconcious as a result of excess alcohol, or hospitalised through drink; your network has crashed under the sheer weight of live broadband streams; your sysadmin is powerless to act because he's in the pub, drunk, and your IT system is accordingly exposed to attack by hackers, crackers, phishers, phreakers, phiddlers, pheltchers and other phelonious phu*kwits; your email server is carrying out a denial of service attack against the Kyrgyzstan Interior Ministry website after Russian spammers gained control of it by bot infection via an email masquerading as a free World Cup final ticket offer, which was inadvertently opened by a temp secretary while drunk...

At this point we'd normally offer a life-saving plan from a specialist sporting-event-meltdown-prevention company which had coincidentally just landed in the Vulture Central inbox.

On this occassion, though, you're on your own. The reason? Well, here's the current state of play down here at El Reg: all business-critical activity has slowed to a crawl as drunken adsales boys and the Strategy Boutique loosen their ties and make their final fantasy football World Cup league selections; the entire editorial staff is either in the pub or about to hit the pub for a rigorous 12-pint warm-up for tomorrow's match; the network is on the verge of falling over under the relentless pressure of live broadband feeds of Alan Hansen mulling at inexorable length England's prospects of scraping a draw against mighty Paraguay; the email server is launching a denial of service attack against eBay's Iraq website - thereby disrupting lively bidding on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi memorabilia - after al-Qaeda seized control of it in an undetected bot assault delivered via an email claiming to offer footage of Ronaldinho romping with an air hostess which was opened by our news editor while drunk; the sysadmin is powerless to act because he hates football and has locked himself in the stationery cupboard and is refusing to come out until the World Cup is over... ®