Worrying

Wed 24 Jul, 12:44

Inducing terminal boredom is a skill highly developed among IT staff I am afraid. I did, however, preface the link with "for those interested".

In any event, I though it worth noting that this is not one of those issues where we can blame MS or those who cling onto outdated and vulnerable software. This was pretty well the reverse.

Wed 24 Jul, 08:13

Thank you for correcting me Steve Jones.

I took your advice and watched the YouTube video you posted but unfortunately fell asleep numerous times attempting to do so. 

Thanks for the insight however. 

Mon 22 Jul, 13:05 (last edited on Mon 22 Jul, 13:06)

It was not a Windows 11 security patch that caused the global outage, it was a third party security application called CrowdStrike which runs at a highly privileged level within the Windows operating system. Consequently, it did not affect most machines. It's a rather unusual piece of security software that detects malware via the behaviour of the machine. Unfortunately the way it gets updates effectively bypasses the normal Windows systems that are meant to make sure that highly privileged software is properly tested. For those interested, there's an excellent video on what went wrong here and why CrowdStrike have a lot to answer for.

As to society being now extremely dependent on technology and computers, then agreed. However, having had a working lifetime in large, critical IT systems, I simply don't see any way back. There can be manual workarounds, but they can't hope to cope with the volumes of transactions or their scope. Imagine if the card payment systems went down for a week and how we would get on trying to use those non-existent bank branches for example (although keeping some cash in a safe place at home might help a bit).

Sun 21 Jul, 20:23 (last edited on Sun 21 Jul, 20:29)

I agree Andrew - complete madness - we have a complete over-dependence on technology! Since I understand it turned out this was a Windows 11 Security patch that went wrong (or hadn't been fully tested) it is however encouraging to inadvertently learn that the NHS is finally technologically more up to date than the time when they were all still using Windows XP and getting ransom demands from hackers.Although it was years ago, at the time it shone a light into how they treated out data given that Microsoft had stooped supporting XP some time before it happened! 

Large businesses really do need to have a contingency plan in case this happens again. But will they? Watch this space...

Fri 19 Jul, 19:36

Valerie, that was a classic show and he was an iconic characterization. The people that show portrayed really knew what 'resilience' was.

Fri 19 Jul, 18:46

'Just leave your name, symptoms, and credit card number ....'

(Hawkeye Pierce, MASH).

Fri 19 Jul, 16:57 (last edited on Fri 19 Jul, 16:58)

As a young Infantry Platoon Commander I was always being issued exciting bits of kit. However, I always told the lads that in battle we could only rely on our bayonets and the Platoon Runner/Messenger. Everything else would fail us and we'd just have to make do. We have got ourselves into a sorry state when the Medical Centre cannot change a wound dressing because 'the computer has gone down'.