What would you do if the Internet suddenly – and completely – went down? Don’t scoff; it could actually happen.
Stephen Bonner, a partner in information protection and business resilience at KPMG, recently met with Computer Weekly to discuss the possibility of complete Internet failure and the reality that businesses do not have sufficient plans to deal with such a situation.
Given the piecemeal structure of the Internet where the failure of one node does not always affect the status of another, this scenario may seem highly unlikely. However, Bonner said in his interview, he has worked at Internet service providers and has "an idea of how it is all plugged together." This, he indicated, gives him knowledge sufficient enough to allow him to claim that human error could cause a catastrophic Internet failure that could last the length of several days.
It is likely an error, and not malicious intent, that would cause this sort of problem to occur. Hackers could potentially disable the entire Internet, but it would not benefit them because, as a result of their actions, they also would not have access. Instead, Bonner said, it is more likely that an accidental release of malware could, for instance, disable every router or corrupt every routing table across the globe.
Businesses may not be equipped to handle such extreme cases of connectivity failure. They may rely on more than one Internet service provider, but that will not do them any good if every router on Earth goes down.
This is, at its core, a business continuity issue. These entities need to continue to be able to conduct operations at some level while the Internet is in a state of limbo. For many companies, complete Internet failure could cause their phones, computers, messaging systems, and entire buildings to become either partially or entirely disabled. In order to combat problems with these systems, Bonner said, most businesses rely on the Internet to give them answers.
"When you talk to the people tasked with solving business continuity problems," he says, "half their troubleshooting program assumes they can use Google (News - Alert) to search for workarounds or patches."
Google, of course, will not be available in this case. Businesses that plan ahead are likely to be the ones that will come out on top. In an Internet-driven world, no amount of local connectivity can completely replace the functionality the Internet provides, but local files can help businesses recover and operate at moderate levels of effectiveness. Images of key computer systems, regularly backed up, can assist in this process -- as can essential business tools that may be configured to access local files rather than cloud-based files.
Given enough preparation, businesses can complete a number of operations without the aid of the Internet. They will need to properly prepare, however, and relying on Google searches to solve problems will not always do the trick. If nothing else, they should at least consider the possibility that the Internet will, and can, fail. With that mindset, departments in charge of creating disaster recovery plans will likely be better prepared than those that have never considered it.