The global tech crash was a mishap. But it serves as a dress rehearsal for more sinister possibilities
By national technology reporter Ange Lavoipierre
Posted Sat 20 Jul 2024 at 5:47amSaturday 20 Jul 2024 at 5:47am, updated Sat 20 Jul 2024 at 8:17am
Interview with Professor Richard Buckland
Cyber security experts all over the world are still scrambling to understand what caused the largest outage in history.
It may be weeks or even months before we have the full picture, but what's certain is that two separate systems — Microsoft's cloud service, Azure, and a software update from cyber security company CrowdStrike — malfunctioned on the same day.
CrowdStrike has since apologised and taken a large measure of responsibility, saying a software bug in one of its updates triggered the problems for Microsoft too.
Both are thoroughly woven into the fabric of the world's digital ecosystem.
