Delta Air Lines' slogan, "Keep Climbing," is a call to action that reflects the airline's culture of service and continuous improvement. Delta CEO Ed Bastian explained that the slogan is "What's the next mountain we're going to climb?" after reaching the top of one. There have been so many articles about the CrowdStrike disaster; here is another one. But when you see what Delta Airlines has been doing to passengers five days after this one piece of destructive code ate the Internet, you can no longer blame CrowdStrike. This was not a single point of failure; it was a parade of failures.
Delta's backup plan failed; the digital age is full of what is often called the "single points of failure" problem, and many large corporations do not invest in realistic backup plans. When the backup plan fails, and you no longer have a single point of failure, you have an event parade with plenty of clowns.
There is a structural reason for this; a genuinely workable "Plan B" is very expensive, and keeping it current is even more costly. No publicly held company will ever invest the money unless some regulation forces it.
Delta was unable to engage in basic tasks like assigning crews to aircraft for days. The analysts look forward to official explanations of this, but Delta's Plan B was clearly a miserable failure. Now, nearly a week after the initial problem, the airline has an airport full of customers. It is impossible to plan for everything that might happen in life if there is always the possibility of an ultra-rare Black Swan event. But a bad software update is hardly a Black Swan event.
The typical limiting function is this: spending on Plan B cannot be infinite. There is always a risk calculation when investing in redundant off-site data storage, extra fire suppression equipment, or battery backup size.
Then there is the problem of training. As anyone who's ever run a "tabletop" incident fire drill will tell you, your imagination only takes you so far. One cannot simulate all main production computers going offline simultaneously; doing so would require shutting down a company. Without an alternate universe or a fantastic simulator nearby, the fire drill you are running will always fall short of training people for the real thing. The last time your company ran an actual fire drill, you realized this, I'm sure, as many critical employees ignored the blaring alert to leave.
As of 25 July, Delta reported returning to ‘normal’ operations.[1]
What will the fallout from CrowdStrike be? What should it be? Sure, the firm's stock price will take a hit. Maybe some companies will switch to new software, though that is unlikely. Delta will have to issue so many refunds that it will take a one-time hit to its quarterly earnings disclosure. Will that force better planning for the following software glitch? Perhaps if there were genuine competition in the airline industry, and enough angry consumers could vote with their feet by rewarding other firms. However, most consumers have little or no natural choice when booking tickets. History shows this will happen again.
This article is shared at no charge and is for educational and informational purposes only.
Red Sky Alliance is a Cyber Threat Analysis and Intelligence Service organization. We provide indicators of compromise information via a notification service (RedXray) or an analysis service (CTAC). For questions, comments, or assistance, please get in touch with the office directly at 1-844-492-7225, or feedback@redskyalliance.com
- Reporting: https://www.redskyalliance.org/
- Website: https://www.redskyalliance.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/64265941
Weekly Cyber Intelligence Briefings:
REDSHORTS - Weekly Cyber Intelligence Briefings
https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/5378972949933166424
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/delta-says-it-s-back-to-normal-following-global-it-outage/ar-BB1qr3I0/
Comments