one small computer update gone wrong and the
world comes to a crashing halt so as we navigate our increasingly digital world is the largest
IT outage in history a wakeup call on just how vulnerable we've become flight grounded it stinks
it's scary Banks medor Outlets government agencies hospital and Emergency Services plunged into
chaos one flaw can cause absolute chaos and havoc on critical infrastructures globally the depth of
the world's dependence on big Tech exposed Windows operates three out of every four desktop computers
how did we allow for one company one entity to control whether or not America and the rest of the
world can be in business Microsoft reports 8 and a half million devices were hit by Friday's outage
less than 1% of all windows machines the cause a botched software update by cyber security company
crowd strike you on musk posted on X that he has deleted crowd strike from all of his systems crowd
strike is a very respectable company they test and they test and they test so someone really
dropped the ball shares of crowd strike taking a battering today in the market crowd strike
is closed to 30,000 customers including nearly 300 members of The Fortune 500 no wonder when
there's a mishap at at crowd strike it affects the globe this may well turn out to be in terms
of the actual impact on personal and Commercial commercial lives the biggest cyber and computer
incident ever but today amid calls to trust our software suppliers they're a trusted company
with trusted products the price of a digitized world and the dangers of monopolization has been
Li bear we've let vulnerabilities creep into the system and one of those big vulnerabilities
is concentration so as the world recovers from the chaos we know what the issue is uh we're
resolving and have resolved the issue is it time we rethink our reliance on digital technology
and the handful of major companies who provide it and it requires a major dialogue with the
tech industry it requires looking strategically at high tech evolves because you're not going
to rip this all out and start again how did we design a system that could take down the world
Dr Toby Fein is Australia's former Ambassador for cyber Affairs and critical technology Toby were
you surprised that one company's era could have such a catastrophic Fallout I tell you what
I mean it's it's evidence of the fact that we now live in this Global Tech ecosystem where
one company can have a huge difference we do have this Global Tech interdependency now and I
think this has been quite um an extreme example of where you know if something does go wrong or
a mistake is made um it can impact just so widely across the globe is this all from just one person
entering a bad line of code like can can we blame this all on just one guy how did did this happen
oh my God you know I I would I would hate it if you could because that one guy you know um they
would be sweating and they wouldn't be wouldn't be in a great place right now laying the blame
at the the feet of one individual I think would be a pretty raw deal however you know this is um
the impacts that we've seen 8.5 million Microsoft devices Microsoft Windows devices being impacted
if we compare that to and I know this was a cyber incident not an attack but if we think about one
of the biggest Global incidents ever which was the W A Cry ransomware incident back in 2017 that
impacted 300,000 Microsoft Windows devices in 150 countries so you know the proportions here are
enormous and the the kind of infrastructure points that have been impacted by a mistake I mean
it really is a a worst case scenario in many respects apart from the fact that this wasn't a
malicious Cyber attack and that's what you got to worry about right tyby that perhaps this is giving
hackers some pretty nasty ideas yeah look the one thing look the whole hacking industry is its own
real culture and on the whole a hacker won't want to reinvent the wheel and if they see that someone
has created a a weakness or found an Avenue they will often Pile in off the back of that and we've
seen that whether it be incidents and I don't know if you know those watching tonight or yourselves
have ever heard of incidence like solar winds um like the Microsoft Exchange hack that went on
but all those in is we saw that other hackers understood what went on learned those lessons and
if you like jumped in on the back of that um to try and exploit it this crowdstrike company
they do antivirus software there's dozens of other options for people looking for antivirus
software but it looks like all the big Banks airports Airlines were using just this company I
mean are we too dependent on just a small number of powerful tech companies well I mean firstly
you know the reason they use it is because it's incredibly good software but it is symptomatic of
um certain firms having huge market share in China yes there were impacts of this um incident but
only really on Western firms and it's symptomatic of the fact that China has gone through quite
a process of trying to nationalize not only its software industry but its Hardware industry
um and its Tech Supply Chain RIT large you know crowd strike is an American company and as we've
seen in geopolitics recently it's really been shaping the way that technology choices are being
made in particular countries and and China that has certainly been the case well Dr F hopefully
next time we chat to you it's not about a global outage technology out we really appreciate your
time absolutely thank you thanks for having me