Last week’s global IT outage wreaked havoc with technology all across the world, and Australia’s transport sector was not immune from the issues. In fact, it is believed some areas of the supply chain could take weeks to recover from the blip.
A faulty software update from cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike saw disruptions reported across multiple countries including Australia, Japan, India, the United States, England, with significant delays causing massive financial losses for companies across the globe.
A report from University of Technology Sydney and Griffith University professors Sanjoy Paul and Towfique Rahman believes the impact of the outage on the world’s freight system has been underestimated, and it indicates a need for stronger backup plans to be implemented ahead of future, similar events occurring.
“As the crisis struck many of us would have been preoccupied with its immediate consumer impacts,” Paul and Rahman write. “Hospital systems going down, some supermarkets operating cash only, flights getting delayed, or news anchors reading from printed notes.
“It’s often forgotten out supply chains – the complex network that turn raw materials into finished products and get them where they’re needed – have also become deeply integrated with technology.
“They were hit hard too.
“This technology has brought enormous benefits to supply chain management, but it has introduced major vulnerabilities, as we’ve just seen firsthand. We need to be better prepared to face a similar crisis in the future.”
It has been suggested the recovery of the air freight industry will likely take days, if not weeks according to Xeneta Chief Air Freight Officer Niall van de Wouw, who says “planes and cargo are not where they are fully supposed to be. This is a reminder of how vulnerable our ocean and air supply chains are to IT failure.”
Paul and Rahman believe due to the certainty that another global IT outage will occur; robust contingency plans need to be built to minimise disruption.
“Any one of these disruptions in isolation would have been a significant incident,” the report continues.
“For them all to happen at once made Friday’s crisis strikingly rare – this doesn’t mean businesses shouldn’t be prepared.
“To build more resilient supply chains businesses within them need to have robust contingency plans in place – even if it means maintaining the ability to perform key processes manually and use paper records.
“New technologies have been a boon for supply chain management, but they have also added huge new vulnerabilities. Taking a proactive approach to cybersecurity and contingency planning can’t prevent all disasters, but it remains a business’ best bet.”
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