When its software supplier unfortunately went into administration, Thomas Cook needed to invoke the escrow agreement and requested a source code release from NCC Group. The fact that Thomas Cook had taken steps to mitigate risk, and had ownership of the build reports for the reservation system, played a crucial part in the legal negotiations that followed with its supplier’s administrators. Only because Thomas Cook had carried out verification of the source code through Full Verification and Build Assured Verification did it have a full build report for the business critical reservation infrastructure that enabled it to carry on maintaining and supporting the application by appointing an alternative contractor to do so. Mark Foy, Programme Director at Thomas Cook commented: “In this instance we believed it essential not only to have the source code covered by an escrow agreement but also to have verified that the application could be built from the deposited materials. When the supplier became insolvent we were able to quickly retrieve the source code and were confident that we could recreate the application. Knowing we could do this was a key factor in how we dealt with the insolvency.”