Following the CrowdStrike incident a few days earlier, I guest edited a special edition of the Public Digital Newsletter to bring together articles and views that explained what happened, how it might have been avoided and what might happen next.
This special edition delves into the major IT disruption triggered last week by a faulty software update from US cyber security provider CrowdStrike, prompting global chaos in travel, healthcare and banking.
A crisis like this is going to take a long time to recover from. Direct and secondary impacts are going to last weeks and months: For the people whose flights have been cancelled, for the backlog of NHS patients still waiting for delayed treatments, and for the IT staff around the world who must manually fix 8.5 million computers.
Those IT teams are going to continue to have a challenging time over the next few weeks, and they deserve our patience, sympathy and thanks.
Equally, it’s worth recognising the speed and efficiency with which some organisations and industries - such as aviation - have recovered. This could have been a lot worse.
It’s a story which shows us that, like the Covid-19 pandemic, global outages like this are a “when” not an “if” problem. The real danger lies in failing to be prepared.