When I went to bed last Thursday, I felt a sense of satisfaction that I had nearly made it through another week working in Cybersecurity. My email inbox was at a manageable level. I had my team working on priorities. It was a decent week. Then, nearly 10 million computers around the globe decided to crash overnight Friday morning.
The week just got longer.
Dubbed “Y2K 24 years later” caused disruptions in the airline industry, hospitals, manufacturers and even turned the Vegas Sphere into a Blue Screen of Death. It would’ve been the topic around the world all week if not for the Biden news on Sunday.
It’s not overstating that we have tied our fate to computers. They are responsible for the newspaper that you’re holding or reading now. They run our banks, our hospitals, our schools. Computers can fly the International Space Station and keep our kids quiet in the back of the car. The world ain’t ready for what we in the Cybersecurity business call “a major disruption.”
In 1984, we barely knew what a computer was and in only four short (but very long) decades, our entire world has been transformed to where you can’t buy a candy bar at the gas station if the computers are down.
What’s worse, is that all of these systems are tied to each other. Like when one light goes out on your Christmas tree, they all go out. Same to some degree with key areas of the Internet. Friday, they all went out.
Nobody would prefer a world without computers. I’d never advocate for that. Besides, it would put me out of a job. However, I do know that computer systems, the Internet, and even the computer you have closest to you right now are all in peril more than you know. Now would be a great time to spend 10 minutes planning for what would happen if banks went offline for a week. Or your grocery store. Or your job.
The next war is already being fought online. Russia, China, and other “bad actors” are launching attacks daily – just as we launch attacks on them.
There’s no real reason to go full tinfoil hat… yet. But as AI continues to evolve, and threat actors never taking a day off, there’s plenty of reason to have a few bucks in a cookie jar, and make sure you have a hard copy of any key financial documents. Imagine one day or even one hour where the entire cell phone network is down. Or heck, just open the front page from Saturday’s papers (if they were able to be published.)
Computers have evolved humanity in countless ways. They’ve sent us to the stars. They’ve revolutionized money and banking. And they’ve made the world smaller.
But they are no replacement for the tangible and the “real.” An hour without Twitter is an inconvenience. A week without computers would be catastrophic. Spend a few minutes and make sure you’ve got a plan. In the meantime, I’ll consider Friday’s event even more job security for me, your friendly Cybersecurity engineer.
(Talk Cybersecurity or whatever you like with Kamler on Twitter, where you’ll find him as @TheFakeNed)
