IT outage exposes the fragility of tech infrastructure
As global disruptions ease and systems start to come back online, the massive IT outage that wreaked havoc worldwide on Friday highlights some unsettling truths about the foundations of our digital existence—and how fragile they may be.
The incident revealed that even a major corporation like Microsoft, with its substantial financial resources and heavy investment in robust system security, can be significantly affected by a simple mistake in a software update from an independent cybersecurity firm. The fallout was severe, given that Microsoft-powered systems are integral to so much of our technological infrastructure.
This situation underscores our deep reliance on this infrastructure and our vulnerability when something goes wrong beyond our control.
In the end, when these systems falter, there’s little we can do to fix it.
I saw an IT expert on TV yesterday advising those caught up in the chaos to “be patient.” While patience might have felt like a distant hope for many, it was often the only feasible response.
Owen Sayers from Computer Weekly pointed out that this incident illustrates “the immense risk of putting all our eggs into one massive, global basket.” He was referring to the vast number of businesses, services, and individuals relying on a single IT provider. While this approach is convenient, it leaves no backup plan if the provider encounters issues.
This situation is a striking example of the old saying that convenience often undermines security.
As a consumer, it is hard to avoid this dominance – if you shop in a store and pay with a card or your phone, you are relying on someone else’s tech to process your transaction smoothly. Increasingly, you are less likely to have a choice – a number of businesses no longer accept physical cash at all.
For small businesses, budgets are tight.
“In some of the cases, the single vendor is a choice due to cost,” says Alina Timofeeva from BCS, the Institute for IT.
“The rationale is that the vendor is so big and powerful that the companies do not anticipate it could go down.”
This makes sense, but is a larger number of smaller IT providers the solution?
You might not get the huge, seismic outages if fewer people are relying on them, but you are also introducing multiple systems with multiple potential weaknesses – which could make them easier to hack.
What happened on Friday was not a cyber attack, and Microsoft is quick to point out that the outage was not its fault, although questions clearly remain about exactly how the cyber security firm CrowdStrike’s disastrous Falcon update slipped through the net.
“There will be someone in CrowdStrike who will be in a lot of trouble right now for not getting this right,” observes Prof Victoria Baines, from Gresham College in London.
“And there will be a lot of people working this weekend.”
