Thank Goodness For Contingency Plans (TGFCP)

[EricC28201]

Have to admit this one made me chuckle inappropriately...I know healthcare facilities were affected and that is NOT funny.

Microsoft/CrowdStrike Falcon Global IT Services Interruption

The incident, however, highlights the undue influence of Competition in the current marketplace and reminded me of the frustration of being the D.R. liaison for my work group back in the 1990's. Profit margin and short sighted focus on immediate, obvious financial returns were always the chief obstacles to implementing and maintaining a robust, effective contingency plan. The irony was palpable.

[GailL1]

How could there be a contingency plan for something that one might not see coming?  A glitch, a human error, a write in a program - a part of an update that doesn’t jive with some OS?  

Yep, maybe we shouldn’t all jump on the band wagon of just one company doing a specific job especially if it is a global entity - but we try to pick the best and even the best make errors.  

We know that the ole manual method of [whatever] can’t work anymore or at least at the speed for which we need it to work.  

What do you think of the new Social Security sign in procedure and why it is being implemented - security!  Two-step authentication.  Seems the government thinks that having such a program is gonna help them out with all the customer service calls they get.  Maybe it will for those that will use it - but how many don’t or won’t use it due to [whatever] their excuse.  

I’m just getting a bit tired of learning, trying to keep up and trying to protect myself and my info when I can’t see what’s comin’.  

[EricC28201]

Today is the first time since the Crowdstrike outage that any of my windows devices have touched the internet so before going to bed I thought I'd post a follow-up...Hope it is interesting enough for a full read.

It's Always Something . . . . Roseanna Roseannadanna

The ever evolving online security environment can be wearisome. This outage exaggerates the feeling because it seems one of our allies is becoming complacent...which damages their credibility.
The catch phrase of Roseanna Roseannadanna may be as close as humans can get to knowing an absolute truth. Which highlights the importance that the most reasonable assessment of an event like this is whether the cause(s) and our response trend toward utopian or dystopian (altruistic or narcissistic prosocial or antisocial constructive or destructive).
Back in the 1980's & 90's contingencies to prevent and/or mitigate events like this were deeply ingrained in our methodology. If this outage had not been prevented, its impact would have been so minor that the only press it might have received would have been in trade journals. The priorities must have changed and reliability suffered. This decrease in reliability and increase in risk to the people served by these systems is likely caused in large part by the highest paid, most influential members of the responsible organization(s). They make the decisions that create the environmental pressures that lead to pushing the profit margin based efficiency envelope ever farther at the expense of reliability. They do it to justify next year's Raise despite already being paid exponentially more than the folks who have to try to keep the systems working.
Two concepts that came immediately to mind were maintaining two boot-able images which is simpler and more affordable than it first sounds. And a scaled roll-out. Install the update on a trucking company and cargo airline's systems before installing it on passenger service systems. Install it on medical supply systems before installing on systems that directly affect patient services. Technology is not a living entity. It can't decide to cause incidents like this. It is only as good or bad, helpful or harmful as the people managing it make it. Most of the responsibility is at the very top of the management structure and that is where the greatest disconnect exists.
Quite literally somebody who gets paid tens or hundreds of millions of dollars per year got an accountant or actuary to look at the historical data. Then they crunched the numbers to show that mass implementations like this would be more profitable than maintaining more effective quality assurance...at least in the short term...let somebody else make their billions pretending to relearn historical lessons.
Maybe a speed limit analogy would be helpful. It is dangerous, inappropriate and unnecessary to travel at freeway speeds all the time. Delivery vehicles don't do it (or at least shouldn't). This was a delivery that crashed (and a crash made worse) because of excessive and inappropriate speed. Hopefully the response will focus more on making processes more robust and better able to cope with human mistakes (which is a predictable fact of life).
I have read a few follow-up/related articles over the past week, but none of them revealed much about corrective measures other than one in The Times India indicating that Microsoft was considering barring Kernel access to all outside Aps.

BTW AARP
The automated email sent to me with the subject: "Did you get the answer you needed?", IMHO, contributes to the problem. It contains an embedded link, and neither the original post nor the 1 subsequent post were Q&A oriented. Your email amounted clutter that makes the problem more tiresome. It contributes to the mess of incoming emails the scammers use to try to hide themselves.

[GailL1]

@EricC28201

Now why would you think that [quote] “This decrease in reliability and increase in risk to the people served by these systems is likely caused in large part by the highest paid, most influential members of the responsible organization(s)”

They are the ones that are losing the most money - these programs are being initiated to save money - right!  These programs are bringing initiated to make it easier for people and the speed to which everybody seems to want to move nowadays.  When something goes wrong, well, water runs downhill and the results are devastating to the person that is at the bottoms of the hill.

We have to deal with it and that’s dealing is a problem for many - me included.  And it does seem like there are getting to be more and more - The CrowdStrike, the UHC CHANGE Health info processing problem, then you have all the ones that affect us in our utilities to who has our valuable information- our numbers, our health data.

We get FREE credit monitoring for a year to keep a watchful eye - We can freeze our credit - we can place fraud protection on our credit file but what about the rest?  Is our governmental systems at risk - I think so and while I might be somewhat worried over private enterprise and their failures in security breaches, I am more worried about our governmental systems like SSA.gov or CMS.gov or even the IRS - 

I don’t know about where you live but here, we have had our local governmental offices hacked and held for ransom.  It’s like an infestation of flies - the problem is taken care of in the immediate sense then they pop up somewhere else and we rinse and repeat.  

So whether the problem emerges from some faulty program or from hackers, those at the bottom of the hill have little they can do except react.  

Yes, It is Always Something . . . . , I just hoped that at this time of my life, I would not have to deal with matters like this.  It makes my hair even grayer.  

@EricC28201 wrote:

The automated email sent to me with the subject: "Did you get the answer you needed?", IMHO, contributes to the problem. It contains an embedded link, and neither the original post nor the 1 subsequent post were Q&A oriented. Your email amounted clutter that makes the problem more tiresome. It contributes to the mess of incoming emails the scammers use to try to hide themselves.

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You do control what you get from this place via email. (YOUR SETTINGS)   Stop it from coming and then just do what I do and skim the daily topics or the ones that are being added to - 

[EricC28201]

...Just sayin'...This is how Skynet and Legion got unleashed...We'll all wish for the Good 'ol Days worrying about hackers phishing us when we're being chased by time warping cyborgs.

😎