The recent global cyber outage that occurred on Friday has been described by cybersecurity expert Troy Hunt as potentially the largest IT outage in history. Hunt expressed his concerns in a post on Friday, likening the situation to the Y2K scare that never materialized.
While the full extent of the impact is still being assessed, comparisons have been drawn to the 2017 'NotPetya' cyberattack, which was attributed to the Kremlin and caused widespread disruptions globally. The White House condemned the attack as the most destructive and costly cyber-attack in history.
This recent incident follows a pattern of major internet outages, such as the one in 2021 caused by a software update from Fastly, and a computer outage at the US Federal Aviation Administration in January 2023. The FAA outage, attributed to a damaged database file, resulted in thousands of canceled or delayed flights but was not linked to a cyberattack.
More recently, a cyberattack on software provider CDK Global led to a systems outage, impacting car dealerships in the US. The company reportedly paid a $25 million ransom to the hackers to resolve the issue, highlighting the growing threat of cyber incidents on critical infrastructure.
As organizations and governments grapple with the increasing frequency and severity of cyber incidents, there is a pressing need for enhanced cybersecurity measures to safeguard against future disruptions.
