A Microsoft glitch triggered by an update from its security partner Crowdstrike recently brought down computer systems around the world. While we noticed airports and banks going down, many big and small businesses were impacted and incurred substantial losses. It was a short-lived digital version of what we saw during the Covid pandemic. Digital Accidents we have endure?
Analysis paralysis dominated the screens that were still working. Some blamed negligence on the part of the company, while others worked out a conspiracy theory in a jiffy.
This could have been a simple glitch that could be both intentional and unintentional. Most probably it was unintentional. You see, it is difficult to predict software behavior during upgrades and updates, especially when many independent pieces are interacting with each other.
Software engineers do test for all possible scenarios, but being exhaustive is close to impossible. At the same time, if a bug is to be inserted intentionally, it can be easily done by simply tweaking a few things. This is how the whole virus industry was born, which in turn gave birth to the anti-virus industry.
Conspiracy Theory
Conspiracy theorists called it sabotage. I am yet to understand by whom and against whom. Is someone trying to hurt the businesses impacted or the one who is providing the services? Competition can play spoilsport but I do not see that as a case here. The only conspiracy I can think of is an attempt to sell some new cybersecurity product by occasionally creating an alarming situation like this.
This, to my mind, is the biggest possibility given that many industries thrive on a bit of fear. Among the ‘fear players’, the insurance industry comes to my mind right on top.
It could well be the insurance industry trying to build a new vertical in cybersecurity insurance. Well, it already exists for big corporations, but they are still not selling it to common users like you and me. We may well be on their radar. Remember, Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffet have started talking about cybersecurity risks at their annual investor meetings.
Digital Accidents
Risks
Optimal Use of Technology
We need to move from overuse to optimal use of technology. For example, the airline check-in process that used to be a step act before digitization is now a 5-6-step process – web check-in at home, the printing of boarding passes at the airport, printing luggage tags, struggling at various automated entry points when QR code readers fail, standing in queue to drop the luggage, time wasted when people struggle to find their boarding passes on their phones. One simple queue would have kept things simple for everyone. A clear case of technology overuse.
Employee Training
Employees not trained in manual processes are a bigger risk in such scenarios. No one has any clue what to do if the system stops working. How many times have we heard ‘Server not working’ as an excuse for transactions not going through? There should be a system to keep the business running, potentially in a skeleton mode, even if all the systems come to a standstill.
This would demand a high level of integrity and accountability at the human resources level, which is questionable with the constant churn organizations face these days. Trusting technology more than people is also a trend that feeds this risk, as people simply shrug their shoulders and say, “It’s not me, it’s the system.”
Someone once asked, if a magnetic tsunami erased all data from the digital world could the world still function? While most of us may think of it as an impossibility, pauses are pretty much a reality that we need to live with as the Crowdstrike incident has shown us. Organizations and users need to be prepared for these pauses caused by digital accidents. Probably, we need some technology-independent solutions as redundancy or alternatives.
Think about it while taking your backup.
First Published in The New Indian Express on 25th Aug 2024.
