Imagine having to build a secure computer system which could withstand bombings, breaches of network security, assassination of personnel and many other threats on a daily basis.

This is the task that faced Walter Cooke during the 1994 South African election which marked the end of apartheid and saw the dawn of a new democratic era in the country.

The possibility of a breach of security had to be calculated and Mr. Cooke was drafted in to assess just how much damage terrorist activity could possibly do.

He had to be able to tell the government whether the elections really could be rigged by being interfered with electronically, work out how it could be done, and how to stop it.

Also included in these calculations had to be other factors such as if the computers were themselves destroyed and if the personnel who operated them were assassinated.

And today Mr. Cooke, who now works for Paragon Bermuda Ltd. -- a Bermuda-based provider of information technology consulting services, will tell delegates at an international IT and e-commerce conference in Washington DC about his experiences.

Mr. Cooke is representing his company at the National Information Systems Security Conference (NISSC), which is a four-day conference which targets those in the military, government and private sector concerned with security systems.

"Risk analysis is a poorly executed part of securing computer systems, and I wanted to use my previous experience to help expand the knowledge in this area,'' said Mr. Cooke.

"I will be using a case study approach, looking at my own experiences applying rapid risk analysis during the 1994 South African election.

"I was responsible for ensuring that the IT resources survived the bombings, network outrages, personnel assassinations and other threats that happened on a daily basis during the 1994 election process. "Under international security, the election had a very dramatic and happy conclusion marking the end of Apartheid and the beginning of all-party democratic rule in South Africa.'' Mr. Cooke, now a senior consultant at Paragon, will address over 3000 delegates at the conference in the US.

And he is determined to promote Bermuda as a centre of excellence for IT and e-commerce.

He will also be hosting a "birds of a feather'' session to review and make a critique of the current security measures to keep out hackers.

"This session will focus on proactive measures to stop hacker attacks on internet sites, including intrusion detection, counter measures and a type of programme that will trick hackers by pretending to be a vulnerable target.'' Mr. Cooke added: "We need more than mere statistics on `who has been hacked this month' and start putting some `sabre tooth' security into our internet web sites.'' Mr. Cooke is a senior consultant at Paragon who has 28 years of experience behind him. He has been at Paragon now for one year and works with clients to find security problems with in their networks or web pages. The company then devise security systems for the clients.