While a wave of IT outages hit worldwide yesterday evening local time, leading to thousands of flight cancellations and affecting various sectors, including hospitals, banks, and stock exchanges, Tonga ICT network was unaffected for most part. The disruption stemmed from a CrowdStrike software issue affecting some Microsoft-based computers.
CrowdStrike, the second largest cybersecurity firm in the world, confirmed the issue was not due to a cyberattack. “The outage is caused by a software issue that has been identified, and a fix has been deployed,” said CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz in a CNBC interview. While some systems can be restored quickly, others may face prolonged downtime.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted,” Kurtz said. The company is assisting clients in resolving the issue, though for some, it will take more than just rebooting systems.
Close to midnight last night, the Tonga Communication Corporation’s (TCC) internet connectivity reportedly became unstable which was confirmed this morning by a TCC customer service staff who said that the TCC internet data network for both landline and mobile is down due to the global network outage and that they are working to resolve the problem. The good part, TCC’s voice network remained affected and that this afternoon, TCC’s internet network is reported to have resumed as normal. However, the Digicel data network was not affected at all during the blackout from last night as confirmed by a customer service agent.
It could’ve been a deadlier blow for Tonga, while in the middle of the Starlink setback to simple connectivity solutions, if this global network problem washed up on us like a tidal wave overnight. Perhaps the worst experience for people through this was when social media briefly closed down due to the outage. Fortunately, so far, we’re fine for now.
The Government’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) gave an update this afternoon on the situation. “To all Systems and Network administrators, particularly via Banking, Aviation, and Shops/Retail Sectors to be mindful and regularly check systems. We also encourage organizations that have been impacted by this disruption to follow the guidance provided by the vendor and act immediately,” CERT said in a statement on social media.
This afternoon, Tonga Development Bank issued a statement on social media saying that its internet banking service is down as well due to connectivity issues from its internet service provider. It did not indicate when its online service will be up and running again.
This incident is a disturbing reminder of how vulnerable we are in our growing dependence on the internet and computer technology and the scale of its disruption to our daily lives it could cause should technology fail us or perhaps rather because we neglect having resilient software and systems in place.
For now, we should also be more careful of scams and phishing attempts after an outage like this.
