The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) said on Sunday, July 21, that the latest software outage affecting Microsoft was one of the biggest "failures" in the Information Technology (IT) field.
“Well, tawagin na natin IT outage. IT outage. Pero isa sa pinakamalaking palpak na nangyari sa IT sa buong mundo (Well, let’s call it an IT outage. IT outage. But it’s one of the biggest IT failures that has happened worldwide),” DICT Secretary Ivan John Uy said in a radio interview.
This statement by the DICT chief is in connection with the worldwide Microsoft outage on July 19, which disrupted flights, banks, media outlets, and companies.
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Uy explained that this is one of the biggest outages globally since Microsoft, which uses CrowdStrike cybersecurity software, was affected.
He emphasized that in this kind of scenario, since the creator of the cybersecurity software had the problem, there is little that can be done to avoid such incidents.
“There's nothing we can do. Because this is the one who makes the software on your computer, the biggest one,” Uy said in a mix of English and Filipino.
CrowdStrike is known for producing antivirus software to prevent hackers from causing disruption.
On Friday, DICT said it is “vigilantly” monitoring the incident through its Cybersecurity Bureau and the National Computer Emergency Response Team (NCERT).
READ:
https://mb.com.ph/2024/7/19/dict-vigilantly-monitors-ongoing-worldwide-software-outage
Meanwhile, the secretary noted that "almost none" of the government agencies have reported issues because CrowdStrike is not the only software used in their systems.
“But so far, based on our report, we haven’t received any reports of downtime because of CrowdStrike,” he said.
Uy further reminded the public to always have a backup on their devices so that if such incidents occur again, their data will not be lost.