Sky News reports on the chaos at European airports due to a suspected cyber-attack:
Latest statement from Heathrow Airport
It's been a while since we had an updated statement from Heathrow Airport, which does appear to be experiencing delays and disruption this morning.
This was what they said at 8.31am:
"Collins Aerospace, which provides check-in and boarding systems for several airlines across multiple airports globally, is experiencing a technical issue that may cause delays for departing passengers.
Lest we forget - it used to be that organizations managed all their IT services in-house. In-house systems could still be compromised but any damage was limited to that organization and any business partners dependent on those in-house systems.
Problem? That 'on-premise' ownership model limited the leverage of big-tech who wanted businesses to have to rely on their 'outsourced' subscription-based shared services deployment model.
So big-tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft encouraged everyone to embrace systems located in 'the cloud' i.e. managed by them - easier (for them) to manage, cheaper (for them), faster (well maybe), better (for them)!
As a result of this 'cloud narrative', the migration of business systems from on-premise to the cloud has been unstoppable over the last decade or so. What would we do without 'the cloud'?
But this was a godsend for hackers and malign forces focused on disruptive cyber attacks.
By targeting a cloud-based shared service, in this case, instead of just bringing down one airport they could attack a service provider (like Collins Aerspace) and bring down lots of airports at once.
Bonus!
The latest attack will undoubtedly be blamed on Russia. But cyberattacks like this one are a symptom and not a cause.
The root of the problem of cyber attacks is due to big-tech's encouragement of business dependency on shared services located in the cloud - one service for all, means all are impacted impacted by one cyberattack.
Time to come down from the cloud people.