Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

If you were looking to buy a new Nissan or Infiniti vehicle over the past several days, you may not have had much luck.  Since the weekend, many of the car manufacturer’s systems in North America have been down following a power outage that affected its data center in Denver, Colorado.  While the outage was restored quickly, NNA Net, Nissan North America’s business applications system, remained down for days, impacting both dealers and customers.

With the system down, dealers were unable to access their businesses systems to order new vehicles, parts, view recall and warranty information, or check incentives and rebates, making it almost impossible for them to function.  While parts of the system starting coming back online throughout the day Wednesday, it wasn’t until that evening that Nissan said all its systems were functioning normally.

The outage also impacted customers, who were unable to buy new vehicles, get information regarding their vehicles or loans, or even make payments in some cases.

Some customers are unable to use our online services due to a power failure at our datecenter that has been resolved. All late fees incurred as a result of the system outage will be waived, and you will not be penalized as long as your payment is completed by Aug 26.

— Nissan (@NissanUSA) August 22, 2019

Naturally, the outage raised security concerns, given the regularity of data breaches that have compromised sensitive customer information.  Nissan itself was the victim of the Wannacry ransomware attack back in 2017.  Nissan, however, assured customers that no data had been compromised and the system outage was not security-related.

Gerald, we apologize for the inconvenience. This is due to a power failure at our datacenter that has been resolved. We are working to restore affected services as quickly as possible. We assure you that personal data has not been compromised as a result of the system outage.

— Nissan (@NissanUSA) August 21, 2019

This is a prime example of why businesses must not take power outages lightly.  Even short-lived outages can have devastating impacts on business systems that aren’t properly protected, when unregulated power results in inconsistent voltage being pushed to electronics. 

Power protection systems are designed to prevent these kinds of extended system outages by ensuring only clean power is sent to business systems.  By regulating line voltage as it enters businesses, power protection systems keep fluctuating power from damaging circuits and taking systems offline.  The Nissan situation shows how easily an outage can turn into a disastrous situation for businesses when they aren’t able to function and employees and customers are unable to conduct business.