Yesterday, the New York Stock Exchange was shut down for four hours because of a systems crash. A little earlier, computers went down at United Airlines, grounding flights nationwide. Also, the Wall Street Journal website went down.
Tech people say the day of disruptions in business, finance, and media was not caused by hackers or a foreign cyberattack, just a series of unrelated glitches. But it illustrates how dependent we have become on a sometimes fragile technology.
From Outages at NYSE, United Airlines, WSJ.com expose digital vulnerabilities – LA Times:
The cyberoutages came one after another: one of the nation’s biggest airlines, its largest financial news publication and its main stock exchange.
Wednesday morning’s spate of technological foul-ups grounded United Airlines flights, sidelined the Wall Street Journal’s website and halted trading for hours on the New York Stock Exchange. Their successive timing ignited widespread speculation about hacking attacks and conspiracy theories about who might be responsible.
Government and company officials said the causes were more mundane and technical, but the shutdowns nonetheless raise concerns about the vulnerability of vital organizations that can be easily crippled by malfunctions or cyberattacks.
As the world becomes more connected, such events expose serious risks for countries, companies and individuals who depend so heavily on fragile technology — often a mash-up of neglected old-fashioned processes and cutting-edge systems. Electricity grids, credit cards, social media, email, public transportation and GPS all have become indispensable to everyday modern life.
“These are incredibly complicated systems. There are lots and lots of failure modes that are not thoroughly understood,” said Jeff Schmidt, chief executive and founder of JAS Global Advisors, a security consulting firm. “Because the systems act so quickly, you have this really increased potential for cascading failures.”
On most days, the Internet and the myriad systems it powers can be counted on to work well enough. But security experts say problems are inevitable, whether due to hacking, human error, broken cables, buggy code or other unforeseen issues.
Technology will evolve and improve over time, but it will never be foolproof. What’s more important, experts say, is for organizations and individuals to better protect themselves against issues that are bound to crop up — an often neglected task.
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