Too Much Trust in Tech, Not People

Trust thought for today - one of my recurring themes of too much trust in tech and not enough in people.

Here from the FT made me smile - sorry paywalled - it is a story about how increasingly easy it is for companies to be brought down by cyber attacks, but how some scraped by with a hastily cobbled together back-up plan when the tech went belly up and survived unscathed. Just.

It starts with the tale of Sweden's Coop Supermarkets who had to close 500 stores for some time recently because ransomware made their tills inoperable and no-one knew or had thought about manual options to over-ride the tech. Oops!

Some fared better. Norsk Hydro avoided any disruption when a group of veteran workers saved the day, some returning from retirement to help out in their catastrophe in the making and how Colonial Pipeline, which transports 45% of oil used by the East Cost of the US, was able to operate the pipeline manually after their ransomware attack (by luck that they still had the employees on site, rather than good planning).

But others have seen the writing on the wall and make it part of their resilience planning. Aviation keeps this skills alive as a matter of course in pilot training and the US Navy has brought back 'celestial navigation' training for its sailors in anticipation of tech failure!

Perhaps time companies reflected on the wisdom and the risks of total digital dependence and consider perhaps people might have their uses after all!

Read the full article here: https://www.ft.com/content/c4ea6fb3-6262-4426-9503-05391f0e523a