Senior Reporter
jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt
A global tech outage that began on Thursday evening resulted in massive disruptions across multiple industries. Flights were grounded, and banking as well as healthcare operations were among those upended.
Guardian Media understands that some local businesses tied to multinational corporations grappled with the unprecedented outage. Responding to questions from Guardian Media on Friday, information technology expert and digital anthropologist Daren Dhoray warned users to beware of hackers attempting to exploit the situation.
“Hackers and spammers are taking advantage of the outages by sending phishing emails to unsuspecting clients. The emails seem to have an attachment that they’re calling an update fix or patch, and of course that attachment in itself is a virus or some sort of malware that could lead to other things. Users should look out for these fake types of emails.”
According to CrowdStrike’s CEO, the defect was not a security incident or cyberattack. Microsoft systems froze in the face of the dreaded blue screen of death. The image of the system error prompted panic, crippled businesses on a scale unlike any before, and stemmed from a software update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
Dhoray said resolving the fallout created by the outage was a time-consuming endeavour. “Even though it’s being reported that it impacted Europe and the Middle East, it trickles right down here into Trinidad and Tobago. There were companies that were unable to conduct business, and some big players in the oil and gas and banking industries as well. It has impacted the world, and Trinidad and Tobago was not left out of it.
“The businesses themselves cannot do anything; Microsoft themselves really cannot do much to recover, but there are particular activities that happen to be manual, and that is what is taking the time.”
T&TEC reported a brief disruption to its online payment platforms. Banks, including Scotiabank and RBC, were forced to deploy contingency measures. However, other utility companies, such as the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) and the Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago (TSTT), were not impacted.
The Airports Authority and Caribbean Airlines maintained regular operations yesterday. BPTT said there were no operational impacts due to the global outage and that assessments were continuing to ensure safe operations. Experts have contended that the incident has since exposed the over-reliance on certain operating systems.
Dhoray stated that local tech support staff have been working around the clock to mitigate disruptions and encouraged users to review their systems. “It’s looking at your disaster recovery and business continuity, and if you want to comment on it, it’s getting businesses to have some sort of backup way to have their core operations ready and available in the event of an emergency. We always have to cater for the consideration that we are an island; what if the internet goes down? How do we communicate?”
Experts have warned of the economic consequences if the software glitch that paralysed the Microsoft Windows operating system persists for days.