As the world is thrown into chaos by two major IT glitches, affecting global banks, airlines and retailers, one IT expert gives his take on the project to make everything okay again.
Simon Pardo, director of technology specialists Computer Care, said: “An IT failure double whammy has brought the world to its knees this morning, and the ongoing chaos will be costing businesses billions of pounds every hour.
“Two separate problems have struck at the same time, with issues hitting Microsoft’s 365 services, and an update from anti-malware product Crowdstrike that is pushing computers into a blue screen of death.
“Updates should always be thoroughly tested before they are pushed out to users, and it’s hard to know whether this is human error or a failure of process.
“Microsoft services are slowly coming back on line, but those users affected by the Crowdstrike update could face days or weeks of severe disruption.
“Unfortunately, there is not a huge amount you can do if your computer has the blue screen of death. Computer users will need to wait for their IT team to resolve the issue, and many people may need to work from their phone or use a pen and paper in the meantime.
“This is a wake-up call for all the companies that have been floored by this attack. Organisations need to urgently review their disaster recovery plans to make sure they can deal with such problems.
“For all business leaders my recommendation is to challenge your IT team – ask them how do we roll-out updates and patches, how would we recover from a Crowdstrike type failure and make sure you run a test and prove your disaster recovery plan works.”
