In South Africa, the scope of the cyber outage highlights the fragility of a digitized and globalized world
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00:00Now, airports, banking, healthcare, a major tech failure hit these industries across the world.
00:06Cyber security firm CrowdStrike says a defect in one of its software updates hit Windows
00:12operating systems. In South Africa, at least two major banks experienced service disruptions.
00:18Customers complaining they were not able to make payments using the bank cards at grocery
00:23stores and gas stations or use ATMs. So what happened? Joining us from London is Tony Thieu,
00:30he's a technology expert. Tony Thieu, welcome to our program. Can you please first explain
00:38how did this major glitch come to happen? Effectively, first of all, thank you for
00:44having me. So the major gate was actually caused by a flawed update of a software called CrowdStrike.
00:50That's the antivirus software, which is specifically designed to protect Microsoft
00:55Windows devices. And what happened is this update included a defect that impacted Windows PCs,
01:02you know, and that led to widespread IT outages. But according to them, so the issue was actually
01:09isolated and it's not a security or cyber attack. So we're talking about a single rogue file here
01:15that needed to be deleted. So that's what the issue was or is. So I gave the example of South
01:22Africa. Were there other African countries that were impacted? Yeah, it's fair to say that yes,
01:27we talked clearly about South Africa because they've mentioned that. But I firmly believe
01:32that other countries were impacted. I can give you an example of myself, for example, part of my team
01:36is actually based in Kenya. And I know today I was actually meant to do a transaction to
01:42a team member and I just couldn't do it. But initially, I couldn't understand why. Obviously,
01:45when I came out to understand the widespread IT outage, so I knew obviously where it was coming
01:51from. And that's not surprising, right? Because when we look at the kind of sector that have been
01:56impacted, so we're talking about a global impact. So we're talking about airport and airlines,
02:00with many cancellations we've seen in major airports, you know, London, Tokyo, Amsterdam,
02:04you surely have the same in Africa, right? Because Africa is not immune. Banking and healthcare,
02:09I've just mentioned about that. So payment being rejected, you know, rail services, emergencies.
02:14So I think it's not difficult to understand that other countries would have been affected,
02:19you know, on top of South Africa. So this glitch, we can say, kind of showed the
02:25vulnerability of the world, the connected world. What about the vulnerability of the continent?
02:32Yeah, we're living today in a very much globalized world, isn't it, right? And you say that, you know,
02:37when Microsoft sneezes, obviously the world catches cold, and that's the same as well
02:41for Africa. So the level of vulnerability here is quite significant, because we're talking about
02:46interconnected systems, you know, many critical services, transportation, healthcare, banking,
02:52I mentioned that, they rely on IT systems. So if you have a failure in one of those systems,
02:56it will cascade in all those other sectors, but also our countries. So we all depend on those
03:02major software providers. So, you know, when you have a software provider like, you know, CrowdStrike
03:08for cybersecurity, so if there was an issue, you know, it would affect numerous organizations
03:13and services simultaneously. And the recovery is complex. That's what we've seen, right? So
03:18you need many interventions. So clearly Africa is also impacted, but I would say maybe to a
03:24lesser extent, for the simple reason that the digital infrastructure in Africa is not as large
03:29and robust as other continents. So where are many countries and many services in Africa still
03:35rely on an analog system. So where we have to do things, you know, handwritten. So in here, clearly,
03:41obviously, it seems to have been an advantage. So I would say, yes, Africa is vulnerable to those
03:47issues that we see globally, but maybe to a lesser extent, because the digital infrastructure is not
03:52as widespread as the rest of the other continent. Well, thank you, Tuniti Youf,
03:58to explain in layman terms what happened. Thank you very much for your intervention. It was a pleasure.