It's not always malware
Every day, cyber incidents and their subsequent downtimes seem to fill the news. These downtimes, both costly and damaging to consumer trust, have rightfully been something that CISOs and CIOs work to prevent with increasingly sophisticated security measures. But sometimes the most damaging "disasters" are the simplest.
Earlier this year, one of the hyperscale suffered a major data center incident in which a water leak triggered a fire in a co-location data center, knocking more than 90 services offline in France. This serves as a reminder to us all that, despite rising cybercrime stealing the headlines, preparing for physical disasters remains a vital part of any disaster recovery (DR) plan. It is crucial that businesses consider the impact that these incidents may create on their own day-to-day operations and invest in their own disaster recovery.
The business continuity emergency
2021 marked a dramatic step change in global climate conditions, with a significant increase in the incidence and severity of extreme weather events resulting in flooding, hurricanes and heatwaves across the globe. The UK and Europe experienced the hottest summers on record during the past three years. This year’s extreme, record-breaking heatwave in July took the UK climate beyond 40 degrees Celsius, and posed serious threats to UK infrastructure.
This ongoing and accelerating trend is now sadly locked into the Earth’s system for decades to come. In Western Europe, heatwaves are increasing in frequency, at about three times faster, and in intensity, roughly four times faster, than in other midlatitude regions according to a recent study. This is having a knock-on impact for business, as evidenced by July’s West London data center outages for Google and Oracle Cloud and heatwave related IT issues for NHS Trusts. The need for C-suites to consider climate-related events as a serious risk to business continuity can no longer be seen as a problem of the future.
CCleaner uninstalled most of a user's programs without permission [Updated]
CCleaner has had a few issues over the years since Avast acquired the popular system cleaning program from Piriform back in 2017.
Issues we’ve reported on in the past here include buggy bundled software, malware, pop-up ads, and unwelcome privacy changes. Today a user on Reddit reports that the tool uninstalled most of his software without his knowledge.
Five common misconceptions about disaster recovery
When disaster strikes, organizations need to be able to recover IT systems as quickly as possible. Not having a disaster recovery plan in place can put the business at risk of high financial costs, reputation loss and even greater risks for its clients, customers and employees.
Despite this, each year business continuity gets cut from the budget and companies continue to fail to invest in DR. Here are five common objections that continue to dominate the disaster recovery budget discussion and why IT leaders need to refute them.
Verizon throws a freebie to customers affected by Hurricane Sandy
Hurricane Sandy struck the Eastern US coastline and affected millions of people. Japan's third largest carrier, Softbank, contributed half a million dollars to aid in the relief efforts, and recently Verizon Wireless announced that it will support affected customers.
The big red implemented the "Hurricane Sandy -- Voice & Text Program" to show its support towards affected customers from parts of New Jersey and New York. As a result they will not be billed for domestic voice and text usage charges incurred between October 29 and November 16. The nation's largest carrier states that it will act proactively and swallow the cost of the bill without any action required by affected customers.
FEMA debunks Hurricane Sandy rumors with new Snopes-like page
The U.S. Government's Federal Emergency Management Agency, known commonly by the acronym FEMA, is cracking down on false information and rumor circulating on the internet about Hurricane Sandy and related recovery efforts.
FEMA's introduction of its Snopes-like site follows a highly publicized Twitter misinformation campaign perpetrated by a former hedge fund analyst and republican political consultant tweeting under the name @comfortablysmug.
Hurricane Sandy is a a data disaster
Earlier this week, as Hurricane Sandy beat the crap out of the Eastern seaboard, I received an email message from lower Manhattan. You may have received this message, too, or one just like it. It felt to me like getting a radiogram from the sinking Titanic. An Internet company was running out of diesel fuel for its generator and would shortly drop off the net. The identity of the company doesn’t matter. What matters is what we can learn from the experience.
The company had weathered power outages before and had four days of diesel fuel stored onsite. Managers felt ready for Sandy. But most of their fuel wasn’t at the generator, it was stored in tanks in the building basement -- a basement that was soon flooded, the transfer pumps destroyed by incoming seawater. It was like a miniature Fukushima Daiichi, not far from Wall Street.
Prepare your digital life for Hurricane Sandy
In the old days people worried less about storm preparations because they generally didn’t know what was coming and had no electricity anyway. How times have changed. These days we have the advantage of things like The Weather Channel and weather.com warn us, or perhaps scare us with sensationalistic reporting. We also have a power grid we rely on for everyday life and computers and mobile devices that keep us connected. So, what do you do when all of this technology suddenly fails, as it is likely to do in the coming hours and days for people in the mid-Atlantic region?
The easy answer is to buy a generator, but those aren’t cheap and, if you live in the path of oncoming Hurricane Sandy, as I do, you will find that stores are already sold out of generators, not to mention batteries, flashlights, milk, eggs and bottled water. However, there are other, cheaper solutions.
Aliens zapped my toaster, or why you should care about space weather
The launch of the iPhone 5, and the fuss that’s being made over it (wow, 2 million sales in 24 hours) shows once again how far IT is embedded in every part of our lives. How lost would we be without any of the electronic kit and systems we so depend on? Even your toaster likely has a microprocessor embedded in it. And all of that makes us very vulnerable in ways that were almost totally unknown to our grandfathers. It’s not the natural world that has changed. It’s us.
You may remember that a few weeks ago there were widely publicized warnings of a solar storm which, in the end, had limited effects. And no doubt this caused many people to think that solar storms are never what you might call a real and serious problem. But consider this: 153 years ago, beginning on August 28th 1859, a super space storm occurred of such proportions as to make Hurricane Katrina look like a minor inconvenience.
There was no Facebook, Twitter or YouTube on 9-11
Today, around the globe, people are, sadly, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. In posting my remembrance, I got to thinking how much has changed technologically and how much circumstances could have been different that day if the resources we take for granted now were available then.
Advanced communications technology of the day was the cell phone, which people trapped in the Twin Towers used to reach family and friends. The cell phone helped warn passengers of United Airlines 93 about the other hijackings. The heroes of that flight sacrificed their lives to save many others. That couldn't have been possible without the cell phone. But what if the people living in 2001 could have used social services widely available today to warn others or offer dramatic, first-hand accounts, photos and videos of events as they unfolded. The historical record -- and tribute to the lives lost that tragic day -- would be much different.
A 9-11 remembrance
Ten years ago this morning, my wife remarked about the perfect fall day. Clear skies, low humidity and freshness in the air. Washington, DC hadn't seen such a refreshing day in months. The sweltering heat and humidity gave way to autumn's charms.
Around 9:20 a.m. ET, I checked the headlines at Washington Post. I had been online for hours, but not looking at local news. I was writing a news story for CNET. Across the top of the page was a one liner about an airplane striking the World Trade Center. We naturally assumed a small plane had struck one of the towers. While I looked for more details online, Anne checked CNN and gasped in the living room. I walked out to see video of both towers aflame. This was no small plane incident.
During the next natural disaster, don't even bother calling
Earlier this week, the state of Virginia experienced the largest earthquake it had felt since 1944, and the entire Northeastern region of the U.S. shook. This weekend, the same region is expected to be slammed by Hurricane Irene, a category 2 hurricane reaching uncharacteristically far north. Frantic people making voice calls on their mobile devices immediately overloaded the networks after the earthquake, so let's make sure that doesn't happen during the hurricane.
Millions took to posting on social networks in the moments that followed the earthquake this week, and an untold number of people began making mobile phone calls to check in or check up, promptly overloading the networks, forcing many to use the web as their fallback method of communication.
How does an earthquake affect Internet traffic?
What's the first thing you think about when the ground shakes. "Run!" Right? Earthquake means get out and away from falling buildings. The folks over at comScore react differently, and in doing so have compiled some fascinating data from this week's 5.8-magnitude quake starting in the Mid-Atlantic region. Dan Piech writes:
"Maybe we’re complete data geeks, but as we evacuated comScore’s headquarters in Reston, Virginia, a mere 72 miles from the epicenter of the largest earthquake to hit the region in 67 years, the first thing on our minds was wanting to understand the quake’s quantifiable impact on Internet usage...
'I think we just had an #earthquake in va, my house was shaking'
Twitter user NeimanMarcus757 is the first person to tweet using the #earthquake hashtag about today's 5.8-magnitude quake originating in the Mid-Atlantic region. He tweeted less than a minute after the quake started, which was 1:51:04 p.m. EDT.
Other people might have posted sooner, but NeimanMarcus757 used the hashtag, which gives him distinction of being first.
New Yorkers saw DC quake tweets before the ground shook
It is said by some that Twitter is the fastest way to get the word out about the news -- and in the case of the 5.8 tremblor that struck central Virginia on Tuesday afternoon, for some that may actually have been the case.
Shock waves from quakes travel at a high rate of speed, however not fast enough that there may be a delay in the ground shaking actually occurring.
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