Above all else, what the final week’s IT outage at airports, banks, media homes, monetary establishments et al exhibits is the over-dependence on one single software program system: Microsoft’s Home windows powers greater than 70% of the IT techniques at these public-dealing organisations. Apple and Linux software program powers the remaining 30%. The final two weren’t affected by the malware by chance launched by the key service supplier, CrowdStrike, into the Home windows-powered techniques throughout the worldwide chain. It was ironic that bother arose when CrowdStrike sought to improve the techniques with a purpose to make it safer in opposition to hackers. Airports, together with in India, suffered lengthy delays as airways have been pressured to both droop plenty of flights or delay them inordinately because of handbook checking. Within the extremely interconnected world such outages can’t be utterly dominated out. However the IT czars want to contemplate whether or not such overwhelming dependence on a single pc operating system and a single service supplier is a sensible concept. The place are America’s anti-trust champions?
Revealed on: Monday, July 22, 2024, 06:00 AM IST