Oh No It’s A Disaster!

We rely on computers everyday, but what would happen to the world if every computer crashed and none had been backed up?
Problems with IT systems are one of the biggest problems a firm faces in the 21st Century. This is in part due to our over reliance on new technology but is also due to the idiosyncrasies of these systems. Most businesses now rely on data held in computer systems, with most databases being run on internal or external servers. If a database were to crash or fail a business could lose significant information which could prove detrimental to a businesses ability to perform. This is where IT disaster recovery is pivotal.

Of course disaster recovery is not only the case for businesses but countries too, a system glitch in 1983 nearly caused WW3. This was caused by a software bug in the Soviet Union’s early warning system, in which a satellite system recorded important information about the military movements of the US air force. On this day the system had malfunctioned and notified Russian command that four missiles had been set off, this was not the case of course and the satellite had recorded beams of sunlight reflected from cloud tops. Luckily a Russian soldier was at hand to use common sense in the situation and note that the Americans would have set off more than five missiles if they were planning an attack. This is an example where technology could have caused widespread disaster and the importance in not becoming 100% totally reliant computer information.

Of course it’s not just computers that can cause an IT disaster; human error can also cause IT problems as was the case in 1998 when two spacecraft were sent to Mars to record the water and carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. Of course they failed in their mission, because the aircraft flew to close to the atmosphere and were destroyed. The error occurred because a sub-contractor on the NASA programmer had inputted US imperial units as opposed to the European Metric units used on all other NASA aircraft.

If the worst had happened in any of these cases questions would be raised as to why plans weren’t in place to combat potential disasters. The most famous is the Millennium Bug disaster that never was. The issue being that when all computer systems were made they hadn’t factored in the ‘what if?’ scenario of when the clocks reached zero zero. It is estimated that around 400 billion was spent to combat the disaster that Millennium day never was.

Alexander Weary wrote this article on IT Disaster Recovery systems on behalf of www.planb.co.uk.