Train Tech Disaster Strands Thousands in Southeast England

How the Current IT Climate Affects Us All

We all tend to take IT systems for granted. From our laptops to our smart phones, tech is so readily available to us and so intrinsically intwined with our everyday lives, we barely even think about how reliant we truly are on it anymore.

It’s only when it all comes crashing down on us that we know the frustration that comes with tech not working how it’s supposed to. It’s a frustration that countless people in the U.K. were forced to endure recently.

A day derailed

U.K. transportation was brought to a halt on December 6 when a radio communication system malfunctioned, resulting in widespread delays and cancellations across the whole train network.

According to Sky News, National Rail said the fault was identified in their GSMR radio system, which is how train drivers and signal operators digitally communicate with each other, including when the trains are in tunnels and on other areas of the track where analogue systems do not work.

Apparently, the incident occurred due to a hardware upgrade to one of the major telecommunication hubs that sent the whole network spiraling. This time-consuming and difficult fix once again illustrates the real danger of forced upgrades to integral systems and how easily it can all go wrong.

The result of this poorly timed “downgrade” was passengers facing long stretches stranded at stations, or, in some cases, journeys canceled altogether, until a backup manual log-in system was activated. However, this slower solution did little to stem the tide of delays washing over countless passengers thanks to an avoidable tech malfunction.

The classification of this fault as “rare” also did little to soothe passengers whose days had already been thrown into commuting chaos. Some travelers reported two- to three-hour delays in their journeys, with one passenger even saying they were forced to pay for a pricey taxi ride just to get to work on time. And to really kick commuters while they’re down, these delays carried on for several days even after the system was fixed while the timetables were sorted out.

Simply put, this hardware upgrade resulted in much more than a disruption to the system — it was a disruption to countless people’s lives.

A crowded market

Of course, this isn’t the first tech disaster this year.

In the summer, the CrowdStrike outage caused one of the worst IT incidents in recent history. CrowdStrike had released an automated sensor configuration update, which, unfortunately, came with a coding error that caused Falcon to search for an invalid memory address within Windows. The result was 8.5 million Windows devices being knocked out of use across thousands of business IT environments, including critical systems like banks, airlines, and hospitals.

This is just another example of how relinquishing control of your IT estate can result in huge issues at the most inopportune times. Each and every one of these apparently “rare” moments should be treated as a cautionary tale. It’s amazing how quickly giving up control of your IT can result in your IT controlling you.

Avoiding a tech disaster

It’s more important than ever for high-level IT leaders to review their update and patching processes. Before doing any hardware or software upgrades, make sure you:

• Question whether the upgrade is really necessary
• Check for potential interoperability issues
• Conduct a full analysis to reduce the risk of problems

IT helps keeps everyone’s lives on track — no matter what the industry — but it’s difficult to do it alone. Having the right software maintenance and support partner can help avoid issues like these that can bring national and global systems down, while also severely impacting or endangering the general populous in the process.

Take back your tech with Origina.