Jack Tame: Tech outages can affect us all

Saturday Morning with Jack Tame

Apart from my beautiful wife, of course, the last person I thought of before I dozed off last night, was Dave.

Dave had texted me a few hours earlier when I was filling in for Heather on Newstalk ZB Drive, to say he was driving home from Levin to Palmerston North when he’d stopped to fill up the car and had encountered a bit of a problem.

He’d filled up the tank, but as he walked over to the foyer and tried to transfer money between his banks accounts in order to pay for his petrol, his internet banking wouldn’t work.

There he was, stranded, waiting for an enormous global technology outage to be sorted so that he could transfer the cash, pay for his gas, and finally get back home.

Although some of the tech outages had been fixed, they’re still affecting thousands upon thousands of significant operations around the World: Airports, airlines, hospitals, emergency call centres, TV and radio stations, and banks. Who’s to say Dave isn’t still out there, madly swiping at his phone and refreshing a blank page on his internet banking?

The outage was caused by Crowdstrike, a cyber security company which is ironically charged with protecting its clients. And there’s no reporting at this stage to suggest it was caused by a malicious act or a cyber attack. It’s just a plain old error. Already some experts are describing it as the largest IT outage in history.

“This is what Y2K wishes it was,” someone said on Reddit.

It’s a salient reminder just how fragile and interconnected many of our modern digital systems really are.

I’d describe myself as being mid-tier when it comes to the uptake of technology. I have a Chat GPT account. I back up my data on the cloud. I use Apple Pay on my phone. And I absoluetely abhor cash. I hate it. Notes? Coins? Seriously?! All that clutter?! I want to go about my business with the fewest things possible. I don’t think I’ve had a wallet that was capable of carrying hard currency in at least fifteen years.

But if the last thing I thought of before I hit the hay last night was poor old Dave, miserable in the dim light of a Levin petrol station forecourt, the first thing I thought of this morning was how to avoid his predicament.

On the way to the studio I stopped by an ATM and withdrew a bit of cash. Not a crazy amount, mind. Just enough for a tank of gas.

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