"Need to catch up"

Austria’s lessons from the Crowdstrike mishap

(Bild: krone.tv)

An unprecedented global technology outage in mid-July has shown that every company must prepare for the worst-case scenario, says IT expert and management consultant Cornelius Granig in the krone.tv talk. He sees a need for Austrian companies to catch up.

It wasn't a cyberattack after all, but a "simple" update that brought half the IT world to a standstill on July 19. Flights were canceled, healthcare services were interrupted and payment systems failed. The incident shows that every company needs to prepare to get by without IT for a few days. "There are examples - including from Austria - of how this has been handled well. Vienna Airport switched to handwritten ticketing very quickly. Other airports in Europe had a complete breakdown in all areas." 

Law failed in the National Council
These are precautions that should actually have become part of a law: the so-called NIS-2 law. However, it failed in the National Council. Granig hopes that the next federal government will take the issue in hand and make companies aware of its importance, possibly with campaigns. "Almost the entire infrastructure that forms the basis of the internet is controlled by the USA or is located there. If something goes wrong there, we can no longer communicate via the internet." 

"Companies not prepared for an emergency"
Austria is well positioned in the area of critical infrastructure. For example, Verbund and EVN have invested a lot of money so that, as energy suppliers, they can maintain emergency operations in the event of serious attacks or technical failures and do not fail completely, explains Granig. Apart from this, however, there is a need to catch up. "Many important companies and suppliers of critical infrastructure are not yet prepared for emergencies." 

Regardless of the legal situation, every company should consider what it does with IT and what the consequences of a failure would be. "In some larger companies in Austria, I'm not aware of this, in the sense that it's not transparent. According to the motto: 'We'll all have the same problem anyway, why should I worry about it'."

Nevertheless, Granig believes that incidents such as the one triggered by Crowdstrike will increase awareness of the issue and possibly lead to a rethink.