Global IT Outage? No Problem, Just Switch Your Device Off and On 15 Times
Turning my device off and on up to 15 times is meant to help a global crisis?
Who else got the ‘blue screen of death’ flag up on their computer yesterday?
Friday 19th of July felt like the world was participating in a real-time Black Mirror episode. A cybersecurity company called Crowdstrike caused a global power outage of IT affecting systems involving many Microsoft platforms, more than 5000 planes were cancelled across the world, trains were cancelled, and banks and emergency phone lines didn’t work. When a colleague went to update the cloud-based software Falcon, it caused a serious malfunction and led to the collapse of just about everything.
Over half of Fortune 500 companies and government bodies such as the top U.S. cybersecurity agency itself, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, use the company’s software.
Put bluntly, Falcon had one job to protect against crashes and disruptions in vital computer systems but ended up taking them down.
I prefer an employee making a genuine mistake and pressing the wrong button rather than an international cyber attack. We already had one earlier this year with the NHS. Nearly 1,300 outpatient appointments and…
