What does it imply for a central government data centre to ignite? In
Korea, it occurred; and it was sufficient for the Government to escalation the national cyber alert level.
What Occurred?
A fire ignited in a government data centre in Daejeon supporting essential online services. Firefighting crews got the situation under control, but it raised awareness of how vulnerable systems can be with one disruption.
There were worries that went beyond the fire. Officials worried about a compromise while the systems were down and escalated the national cyber alert level worried citizens wouldn't be overly vigilant.
Why Does a Fire Means Cyber Risk?
Weird, huh? But herein lies the point.
- After the servers went down, it was pandemonium in the shop to fix the issue.
- A hacker's happy place.
- Federal service (tax portals, ID systems, etc.) become soft targets.
When
Korea raised the alert level, they essentially said to thier teams, "Don't let the hackers move in while you are both distracted in following extended protocols.”
What Can We Learn?
This is not simply a Korea dialogue. Consider if a single building can create a ripple fire risk to a single country’s on-line service. What complications of risk do we create in an office or school?
Here are some lessons learned:
• Keep backups secure.
• Have a disaster recovery plan for fire, flood, or outages of power.
• When things go wrong, be honest and transparent with the users– it creates trust.
How Korea Responded
The government acted quickly. They:
• Monitored the systems for any odd behavior.
• Completed assessments of vulnerabilities.
• Coordinated with cyber experts to prevent a possible attack.
The quick response likely prevented any harmful behavior as a result of the fire.
In summary,
A physical event can very rapidly become a digital event. A fire, outage of power, or flood is not simply a building issue in the physical space. Instead, it creates pathways for a myriad of cyber vulnerabilities.