When Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram went down for 6 hours on Oct. 4 people lost their minds—should you lose yours?
It’s still unclear what happened but it was probably a DNS (domain name system) issue. The DNS is the “phone book” of the internet that connects the company’s domain, such as Facebook.com, with an IP address. Basically, without it you can click on Facebook.com but the computer can’t take you to their address. Which stinks not only if you wanted to post your latest cat pictures or regularly conduct business on Facebook, but also if you work there: Facebook manages its email and productivity tools internally, so workers couldn’t communicate with one another or even get electronic security badges to open locked physical conference rooms!
What caused the outage? Also unclear. It happened a few hours after CBS’s 60 Minutes aired an interview with a Facebook whistleblower who accused the company of knowingly allowing disinformation and hate speech in order to maximize profits. Employee error or sabotage from inside or outside the company are active possibilities.
Some take-aways for companies that aren’t multibillion-dollar tech giants (i.e. almost every company on earth):
- Make sure the web-based platforms your business relies on are reliable themselves by asking hard questions of them to make sure they are following best practices when it comes to security and redundancy.
- Be judicious about tech-heavy solutions to ordinary problems. Make sure you won’t be locked out of your office when the internet is down.
- Pay attention to cybersecurity, both internal and external! This is a growing problem that will only get larger. It’s not an area for budget cuts or bargains.
- Ask your IT department or MSP (Managed Service Provider) how to protect your business’s DNS protocols so a Facebook situation doesn’t happen to you.
If your business doesn’t already have an IT partner who you love, we should talk! Ascend Technology Group can help you vet platforms for security and reliability so that you can make well-informed business decisions. We’ll help you not lose your mind when tech goes out, even if your aunt Denise and Mark Zuckerberg are losing theirs!
