Yesterday, a catastrophic software upgrade caused a major outage at a university, affecting staff and students’ ability to access crucial files and information. This incident highlights the increasing vulnerability of society to unexpected technology failures due to the centralized nature of cloud-based technologies. While efforts have focused on cybersecurity attacks, low-level outages from software updates can have a significant cumulative effect on lost productivity.
The incident also raises concerns about the societal costs of relying on cloud services, as firms may view occasional downtime as a cost of doing business without considering the broader impact on clients and society. Policy-makers are urged to address the social consequences of technology failures, especially as AI and other emerging technologies further complicate the digital landscape.
The university outage serves as a reminder of the need for firms to invest in resilience measures to mitigate the impact of technology failures. Government policies have promoted digitization without adequately addressing the risks of reduced resilience, pushing the responsibility back to firms and individuals. A policy discussion on digital systems resilience is necessary to ensure more robust and reliable technology infrastructure for all stakeholders.
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