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The weekend of 18 July will long be remembered, when Microsoft systems crashed, bringing airports, banks, the London Stock Exchange, various institutions and companies to a halt. The problem, unexpected and therefore without adequate countermeasures, exploded globally and it took some time to get to the bottom of it. The losers, besides of course the operators of the affected sectors, were the end consumers, helpless in the face of something that was not comprehensible to them
The image of the ‘blue screen’ of windows in airports almost all over the world has become iconic.
But beyond that, what is worrying is how an error, probably human and not system error, could cause a simultaneous worldwide blockade of such magnitude.
A blockade that, it should be remembered, in the aviation sector had repercussions for several days and saw millions of euros go up in smoke.
The issue, in fact, highlighted the almost total dependence of Western systems on a single technology, a dependence that for obvious reasons did not affect two nations like Russia and China, which are notoriously independent of Microsoft.
The issue, while appearing simple at first glance, does not have an easy solution. Indeed, equipping the various affected parties with a parallel and alternative system seems unfeasible and excessively costly.
And yet, a single bug caused damage and problems in the blink of an eye, in a world that by now does not seem to be able to afford, or at least be able to cope with, such an event quickly.
And if we think that some of the conflicts see IT management systems as the battleground, we realise that this is not to be underestimated.
Microsoft has assured us that the problem is solved and cannot happen again, but are we sure that tomorrow, in an online war, the right click is not enough to come out the loser?
The wish is that we never find out.
Femo