What is Fire Sale?
If you are a true “Die Hard” movie franchise fan, you would have certainly heard of a Fire sale. But if not, a Fire Sale is an all-out cyber warfare attack that performs a three-stage systematic attack on a nation’s Information Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure. Hackers called it Fire Sale because “Everything must go“. This post will sound a bit like the movie conspiracy, but please bear with me as I raise some important questions at the end.
Disaster Recovery Management
One of the biggest responsibilities for most CIO’s and IT leaders nowadays, is Disaster Recovery (DR) of their systems specially from outages happening due to tech problems or emergencies. With the push to cloud technologies, many organizations have off loaded this DR risk to their cloud service provider or infrastructure provider. Using reliable cloud services, companies can now aim to recover their systems within the agreed SLA’s of Recovery Time Objective (RTO– how soon can the systems be restored) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO– to what state can the system restore to). Larger companies, with sufficient funding, have opted for a hybrid solution by using Hyper converged infrastructure (HCI – on prem) along with a Cloud Backup strategy to manage the risks.
WEF Simulation exercise
The importance of this risk can be highlighted by the fact that on July 8th, World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Cyber Polygon hacking simulation was scheduled with an aim that participants will work through the actions of a corporate response team in a targeted attack on their hybrid cloud infrastructure. Always good to prep for disasters one would say specially when supported by INTERPOL which has been an integral part of the Cyber Polygon since its inception in 2019.
Canadian digital economy fire sale
Coincidentally on the same day, one of Canada’s largest networks, Rogers, was knocked down apparently after a network maintenance update. The widespread disruption paralyzed communications across sectors including healthcare, law enforcement and the financial industry. Nobody could buy or sell anything. Phones and WiFi were down everywhere. Cash turned out to be King as ATMs, debit/credit cards were not working. Basic health care services could not be provided, and tel-health didn’t work either! Small business owners were among those hardest hit by the outage, which left them unable to process debit card payments as most customers didn’t carry cash. Many homes reliant on smart tech using an internet connection to function, such as door locks, lights and smoke detectors, had nothing working at home. The outage thankfully did not last for more than a day, but sufficient damage was done forcing Canada’s industry minister to meet with Rogers CEO after ‘unacceptable’ outage. This in summary was almost like a “Fire Sale” of the Canadian digital economy! The WEF said that they actually cancelled their simulation, but did their simulation actually cause this outage? Only time will tell! That ends the conspiracy bit of this post.
Important questions
This incident does raise many questions specially when many central banks and governments across the world are pushing for more digitization of economic transactions, digital currencies and the elimination of cash and other alternative forms of payment.
- Are digital currencies really such a safe and viable option for running economies specially when they are so vulnerable?
- Can state sponsored espionage activities target digital economy supporting infrastructure to bring a country to complete stand still?
- Could a corporation intentionally cause such incidents to hold a country hostage? For example, most US technology providers blocked all their services in Russia in retaliation to Ukraine situation. How should other countries evaluate their risk to such actions by corporates and other state actors without having a legal recourse?
- What happens to the economy and to the social infrastructure if the outage carries on for more than a day? How soon would the society recover from such an event? Would this be worse than a pandemic lock down situation?
- Should more countries run simulation to ensure that their digital economy is not easily comprisable? How often should such simulations be conducted? Will governments have the capability to invest in such activities and will they have access to trusted consultants and corporations to figure out workable alternatives?
- As technology leaders, is it the right time that we should think about alternative technology solutions that can help avoid or recover quickly from such incidents?
- Why wasn’t this network upgrade considered as critical infrastructure and handled as such? Why didn’t the backup network systems kick in after the botched upgrade?
- What should be the government’s backup plan to allow commerce to function apart from trying to restore the outage?
- Who in the government be held accountable for such outages and what legal courses do citizens have specially if the outages have caused physical, financial or health crisis?
- As customers, should we create a backup plan and carry some cash all the time and learn to transact in cash rather than relying on debit/credit card or digital payments all the time?
Conclusion
I am sure there are many more questions that can be triggered from this situation. It is however important to note that many developed and rapidly developing economies around the world, are at a critical junction from a technology dependency perspective. Almost a point of no return if I should be brave enough to state. The big question is, “should governments embrace digital economies and their ramifications fully or learn to balance digital vs cash based economies so at least there is a fall back option?“Will we all make the right decision or will we run with the hype cycle as always? On a personal note, I have learnt my lesson and will always carry some cash just in case. What will be your backup plan in case a “Fire Sale” happens in your city? Please share your opinion in the comments.