Cashless society

[farmerge]

Without wanting to offend anyone personally, and I'm sure there are individuals for whom this does not apply, but for me it comes down to my lived experience both personal and professional.

Suffice to say IT is a long way down the list of professions I'd put trust in. Because I've simply encountered far too many incidents of obvious failures to follow proper testing procedures or even intentional bad actions.

Even big name companies have that problem - an update Friday night or Saturday morning, then it's broken until someone fixes it on Monday. That's a pretty sure indication that they didn't even test it properly after implementation and just went home. Big software companies, banks, stockbrokers, solar inverters - I've seen stuff ups with all of those just in the past few months.

It's a culture that has no place in a situation where failure brings serious consequences. This recent incident having done everything from leaving travellers stranded to cancelling surgeries in hospitals, to stopping motorsports to closing supermarkets. Some are more serious than others but those are all real world, physical impacts.

It's one thing to put faith in something where you know everything's being done "by the book" and the chance of failure, whilst never zero, is remote. It's quite something else however to put faith in something where mishaps are routine and the attitude seems to be one of not being concerned.

One of the keys seems to be a lack of communication. Taking the recent Iress issues as an example, they certainly didn't inform customers that they'd be disabling the system not just all weekend but into the following week as well and that it'd take two weeks to get it working sort-of properly and even then it's a downgrade in some respects with less detail and now far slower. Now that's a system being used by people with real money on the line and real consequences from failure.

IT seems to have an attitude that they can do whatever they like whenever they like. Completely forgetting that actually the customer owns the hardware and has paid for a license to use the software that was sold as having certain features. Likewise it's the customer's money in the bank, or they've paid to fly from A to B or they've paid to see a show or whatever. It's not for someone in IT to decide to just take that away.

An issue there is nobody else would get away with the same conduct. If someone decided to take back what a consumer had purchased, to not provide what was paid for, or to shut down banks or airports, they'd find themselves in massive trouble legally unless due to circumstances legitimately beyond their control.

Now from a personal perspective well I use computers, I use EFTPOS and so on yes. But I don't take it for granted that it'll keep working, since I'm consciously aware of the above. So I've got cash in my wallet, there's food in the house, petrol in the tank, etc.

Last paragraph SAME

 

[farmerge]

As long as you can still eat something on your next meal..but I overall agree:
Many have priorities wrong in life

In our life IT is not high on the priority list, because as I have mentioned previously CASH heals all ailments.

 

[qldfrog]

Last paragraph SAME

And do not forget that most IT support is outsourced to a Bangalore back office, with the same "Steve" guy potentially answering support calls for telstra, US AT&T..
As for the indian programmers ..why would they even really care outside of keeping their job ...maybe?..and pushing the blame further...
Ahh the cloud...a dream...

 

[divs4ever]

why would they even really care outside of keeping their job

???

my info might be out of date , but i was hearing strong indications many on 'support desk' were actually uni. students moonlighting to pay the bills ( just like several Aussie uni. students i came across in my working years )

what if this was just a stop-gap until they get a degree and a career

 

[Value Collector]

That is really sad for the lady. Yet others in the same situation are able shrug their shoulders and realise there is a tomorrow and the purchases can be made then. Depends on an individual's approach to the circumstances.

I've been inconvenienced by technology failures such as stuck at Brisbane airport for hours. Last week, on a very cold day, a power outage for most of the day. I coped by putting on an additional layer of clothing but others have greater issues. Reliance on medical equipment for one. People being unable to pay for goods due to techo faults isn't high on my list of what I view as disasters.

I think that what it comes down to is that relying on tech can be inconvenient on the day it fails, but not using tech is inconvenient on every other day.

For example some here point at the fact that one day in the future I not be able to make a purchase because the digital payments system fails, but the thing is every other day I am avoiding the inconvenience of having to make special trips to ATM’s, carry cash that could be earning interest, sit in economy for hours where I could have upgraded to business class with points, deal with coins and change etc.

 

[JohnDe]

That is really sad for the lady. Yet others in the same situation are able shrug their shoulders and realise there is a tomorrow and the purchases can be made then. Depends on an individual's approach to the circumstances.

I've been inconvenienced by technology failures such as stuck at Brisbane airport for hours. Last week, on a very cold day, a power outage for most of the day. I coped by putting on an additional layer of clothing but others have greater issues. Reliance on medical equipment for one. People being unable to pay for goods due to techo faults isn't high on my list of what I view as disasters.

If it was as simple as you make it sound, the issue wouldn’t be front page news for three days straight.

 

[JohnDe]

 

[JohnDe]

 

[JohnDe]

And do not forget that most IT support is outsourced to a Bangalore back office, with the same "Steve" guy potentially answering support calls for telstra, US AT&T..
As for the indian programmers ..why would they even really care outside of keeping their job ...maybe?..and pushing the blame further...
Ahh the cloud...a dream...

And they only work part of the day.

At least IT support isn’t required for cash

 

[againsthegrain]

I tried to get petrol today the whole station was closed cash or card

 

[JohnDe]

I tried to get petrol today the whole station was closed cash or card

Good thing you weren’t one of those that filled up and then couldn’t pay because the eftpos was down, and you had no cash.

 

[Smurf1976]

I think that what it comes down to is that relying on tech can be inconvenient on the day it fails, but not using tech is inconvenient on every other day.

Agreed, but consider how other similar situations are approached.

For example aviation. Nobody would sensibly dispute the benefits but we don't just accept plane crashes as the price to be paid. Instead as a society we have multi-layered approaches to minimising the risks via engineering of components, redundancy of systems wherever practical, formal procedures for testing and operation, licensing of people who work on such systems, ground crews able to respond if something does go wrong upon landing, and so on.

End result is whilst not perfect, serious failures are uncommon. It's highly unlikely that you or any person you've ever known in any capacity will be involved in a serious incident involving commercial aviation. The chance isn't zero, but it's incredibly unlikely. All they're likely to experience is some delays, turbulence and the odd random lost baggage.

Now how many serious IT failures, ones with broader consequences, have we had in the past two years?

How many data breaches of what ought be confidential information that have not been, cannot be, undone?

How many major communication outages or failures of critical services (eg banking, supermarkets, transport, petrol stations) and so on?

I've nothing against the IT industry but I do think it's failing to take a professional approach to safety and reliability in the way that other industries do.

A data breach revealing personal information is to IT what a plane crash is to an airline or a bridge collapse is to engineering. It's an actual disaster the consequences of which cannot be undone. It doesn't seem to be taken anywhere near as seriously however.

Same with reliability. The approach seems to be to shrug off failures whereas in other industries anything of this magnitude would see external investigations not just internal.

So as I see it, IT has become an essential service and has also become a safety critical industry but the culture around it hasn't evolved to that same level. IT companies are still in the mindset of being tech innovators when in truth, for everyday systems running Windows they're now far closer to banks, public transport or utilities in nature.

The average user couldn't care less about a new version of Windows these days, that hasn't been exciting for 20 years now, but they absolutely do care if a data breach or mass failure occurs. The culture needs to reflect that. It's no longer about tech innovation and hasn't been for quite some time now. These days it's about integrity, safety and reliability.

Because it's easy to say well it's no big deal if you couldn't buy groceries and for many that is true. But put yourself in the shoes of the person living pay to pay who doesn't have much food in the house. Or the tourist or immigrant who just arrived and needed to buy some essentials. Or the traveller who's stuck because they can't buy petrol even with cash. Or the person who's surgery's been cancelled. Or the person who suffers financial loss due to a data breach. Etc.

 

[Value Collector]

Agreed, but consider how other similar situations are approached.

For example aviation. Nobody would sensibly dispute the benefits but we don't just accept plane crashes as the price to be paid. Instead as a society we have multi-layered approaches to minimising the risks via engineering of components, redundancy of systems wherever practical, formal procedures for testing and operation, licensing of people who work on such systems, ground crews able to respond if something does go wrong upon landing, and so on.

End result is whilst not perfect, serious failures are uncommon. It's highly unlikely that you or any person you've ever known in any capacity will be involved in a serious incident involving commercial aviation. The chance isn't zero, but it's incredibly unlikely. All they're likely to experience is some delays, turbulence and the odd random lost baggage.

Now how many serious IT failures, ones with broader consequences, have we had in the past two years?

How many data breaches of what ought be confidential information that have not been, cannot be, undone?

How many major communication outages or failures of critical services (eg banking, supermarkets, transport, petrol stations) and so on?

I've nothing against the IT industry but I do think it's failing to take a professional approach to safety and reliability in the way that other industries do.

A data breach revealing personal information is to IT what a plane crash is to an airline or a bridge collapse is to engineering. It's an actual disaster the consequences of which cannot be undone. It doesn't seem to be taken anywhere near as seriously however.

Same with reliability. The approach seems to be to shrug off failures whereas in other industries anything of this magnitude would see external investigations not just internal.

So as I see it, IT has become an essential service and has also become a safety critical industry but the culture around it hasn't evolved to that same level. IT companies are still in the mindset of being tech innovators when in truth, for everyday systems running Windows they're now far closer to banks, public transport or utilities in nature.

The average user couldn't care less about a new version of Windows these days, that hasn't been exciting for 20 years now, but they absolutely do care if a data breach or mass failure occurs. The culture needs to reflect that. It's no longer about tech innovation and hasn't been for quite some time now. These days it's about integrity, safety and reliability.

Because it's easy to say well it's no big deal if you couldn't buy groceries and for many that is true. But put yourself in the shoes of the person living pay to pay who doesn't have much food in the house. Or the tourist or immigrant who just arrived and needed to buy some essentials. Or the traveller who's stuck because they can't buy petrol even with cash. Or the person whose surgery's been cancelled. Or the person who suffers financial loss due to a data breach. Etc.

Yes, but the way some people talk here, is that we should be avoiding planes because they crash sometimes.

I do t think anyone is saying we shouldn’t be engineering it systems to try and prevent failure, but some people here literally want to stick to horse and carts, instead of moving to planes.

 

[JohnDe]

I wonder if there will be compensation claims.

Australians – and millions of others across the globe – were left unable to pay for groceries at supermarket checkouts, complete internet banking or access essential medicines among other widespread disruption. ​

But the chaos Crowdstrike’s fault caused underlines how IT has become as essential as running water. It has become the bedrock of our economy and when it sneezes, everyone catches a cold.​

View attachment 181140

Calls for compensation have started -

CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company at the centre of a global IT outage that crippled economies, may be required to compensate Australian consumers.​

Compensation talk grows after CrowdStrike’s crippling outage​

The CrowdStrike outage hit about 8.5 million Windows-based computers and laptops – costing the global economy billions of dollars – as Australian businesses scrambled to restore services amid questions over costly compensation.

A software update from CrowdStrike – a Texas-based cybersecurity firm – sparked what is known as the “blue screen of death”, rendering Windows devices useless and knocking out big banks, supermarkets, hospitals and airlines on Friday.

Microsoft – which suffered a separate glitch at the same time on its cloud-based Azure service and Microsoft 365 suite – said the CrowdStrike fault affected about 1 per cent of Windows-based computers and laptops that are currently in use globally.

“While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services,” Microsoft vice-president for enterprise and OS security David Weston said.

“This incident demonstrates the interconnected nature of our broad ecosystem — global cloud providers, software platforms, security vendors and other software vendors, and customers.”

The outage is expected to cost the global economy billions of dollars. In NSW alone, the damage bill is expected to top $200m, according to Business NSW.

When asked how it planned to compensate customers, a CrowdStrike spokesman declined to comment and referred to pre-prepared statements issued by the company.

However the company’s website states that under Australian law it is required to compensate customers in the event of a major failure of one of its products.

The company said it was required under Australian law to provide either the eligibility to end a service contract and to refund an unused portion of a contract or compensate for a product’s reduced value.

“For major failures with the service, you are entitled: (i) to cancel your service contract with us; and (ii) to a refund for the unused portion, or to compensation for its reduced value. You are also entitled to choose a refund or replacement for major failures with goods,” the terms and conditions read.

The company states that if a failure does not amount to a “major failure” customers are entitled to a refund for the goods and refund any unused portion.

“You are also entitled to be compensated for any other reasonably foreseeable loss or damage from a failure in the goods or service,” the terms read.

Big customers included the top four banks, Coles, Woolworths, Bunnings, Telstra and Qantas.

Customers at Australia’s biggest bank, Commonwealth Bank, were initially unable to complete PayID transactions online but a CBA spokeswoman said access was restored on Friday evening. An Australia Post spokeswoman also said the outage hit its online payments business, SecurePay, which is used by more than 40,000 businesses. The spokeswoman said it hindered the ability for some customer to complete transactions.

Data from aviation analytics company Cirium showed flights in Australia continued to be affected by the CrowdStrike outage on the weekend, with 77 flights cancelled on Saturday and 40 per cent of services delayed, sparking chaos and long lines at airports.

Jetstar confirmed its schedules had stabilised by Saturday afternoon following a nightmarish Friday when more than 150 flights in total were axed.

The impacts to Virgin Australia and Qantas were less dramatic with only a handful of flight disruptions.

A Jetstar spokeswoman said the global software issue affected multiple systems across the airline including those used to communicate with customers.

The outage caused some “holdups” for customers at Australia’s biggest telco, Telstra. A spokesman said these issues were resolved on Saturday afternoon but warned of a spike in scams from criminals seeking to exploit the outage. He declined to say how much the outage cost Telstra nor if it would seek compensation from CrowdStrike.

“Customers should be aware of increased scam and phishing activity following the event, including being suspicious of any contact (email, SMS or phone call) from people claiming to be from CrowdStrike, Microsoft or Telstra, claiming they can help fix their IT issues. We ask customers to be alert to this activity and not click on links in SMS or email that are not from a verified source,” the Telstra spokesman said.

He said calls to triple-0 and Telstra’s fixed and mobile network remained unaffected from the outage.

The nation’s supermarkets were mostly back online over the weekend, both the check-outs at the physical stores and online platforms, with Coles saying its supermarkets across the country were open and trading.

“Some registers may be temporarily unavailable while we fully recover. We are putting on extra team members to assist customers with their shopping, and we thank everyone for their patience,” the supermarket giant said.

It said many of its Liquorland, Vintage Cellars and First Choice Liquor stores will also be trading, with remaining liquor stores to re-open as soon as systems were restored.

A spokesman for Woolworths said all of its stores except for six were open and trading.

“In some cases, customers may find less registers available than normal so we’re grateful for their patience,” the spokesman said.

AMP head of investment strategy, Shane Oliver, said the global outage was brief and was unlikely to have had a huge economic impact beyond disruptions that will have to be made up for. However, he was expecting a backlash.

“The global IT outage on Friday impacting many Microsoft Windows computer systems will likely further fuel the backlash against globally integrated supply chains in favour of state intervention with protectionist measures. Its also a reminder to always carry a bit of cash,” he said.

CrowdStrike also has federal government contracts, totalling more than $4.2m, with the Department of Defence, Australian Signals Directorate and Future Fund. The outage prompted crisis meetings with the Albanese government over the weekend.

Mr Weston said Microsoft was “working around the clock” to provide “ongoing updates and support” to resolve the outage, which some expert say will take days, if not weeks.

“Additionally, CrowdStrike has helped us develop a scalable solution that will help Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix for CrowdStrike’s faulty update,” Mr Weston said.

“We have also worked with both AWS (Amazon Web Services) and GCP (Google Cloud Platform) to collaborate on the most effective approaches.

“We recognise the disruption this problem has caused for businesses and in the daily routines of many individuals. Our focus is providing customers with technical guidance and support to safely bring disrupted systems back online.”

The CrowdStrike outage is the latest blunder in cloud computing. In May, Google accidentally deleted UniSuper’s entire subscription base on its cloud service, locking out the fund’s 600,000-plus members from their accounts for days.

Mr Weston said the CrowdStrike outage was a “reminder of how important it is for all of us across the tech ecosystem to prioritise operating with safe deployment and disaster recovery using the mechanisms that exist”.

“As we’ve seen over the last two days, we learn, recover and move forward most effectively when we collaborate and work together. We appreciate the co-operation and collaboration of our entire sector, and we will continue to update with leanings and next steps.”

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz apologised to customers and said he understood the “gravity of the impact of the situation”.

“We quickly identified the issue and deployed a fix, allowing us to focus diligently on restoring customer systems as our highest priority,” he said.

“The outage was caused by a defect found in a Falcon content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.”

Asked on CNBC why CrowdStrike didn’t opt for a phased approach to the upgrade – which host Jim Cramer said was “irresponsible” – Mr Kurtz said the company “had been doing this a long time” and “not all of our customers were impacted”.

“Traditionally goes out in a phased approach. So it initially went out and we started to see some issues, and then pulled it back so not all of our customers are impacted,” he said.

“As soon as we saw this issue, which didn’t manifest itself before we obviously sent it out, we rolled it back. And you know now we’re dealing with the impacted systems.”

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar on Sunday conceded the global IT outage had a major impact but it was difficult to estimate the total cost to business due to the disrupted trade, failed websites and other business disruptions.

“There’s no doubt that’s cost a lot of businesses, time, money, lost sales. It’s been inconvenient for consumers. It’s been inconvenient for travellers. So look, it’s very hard to put a dollar figure on that. Those losses will be there. In the circumstances I think there’s been a concerted effort to get systems back up and running as quickly as possible. So I think from that point of view, business is at least grateful for that effort.”

He said the outage on Friday was “very regrettable in the circumstances”.

“It’s unfortunately unavoidable, at least it is not the result of a security hack or a compromised security system. It’s part of the unfortunate reality of working in a very connected economy.

“The other thing I just say in relation to Friday is I do compliment the way that the government, the way that officials have responded to this. So the government stood up the national co-ordination mechanism very quickly.”


Businesses all around the world were affected by CrowdStrike outage. Picture: David Clark

He said CrowdStrike had been involved in meetings to wade through the problem alongside business and government.

“I think that’s been prompt and I don’t think we could have asked for much more in the circumstances.”

Mr McKellar said the IT systems collapse highlighted in-built vulnerabilities in the nation’s IT infrastructure and would serve as important lessons going forward.

“There are going to be lessons coming out of this. I think lessons across the board from a commercial point of view for the IT suppliers for industry more generally in terms of how we try and build those safeguards into the system. For many of the users, there’s not a lot they can do. We do have those vulnerabilities and we really are looking for the suppliers for the IT industry to minimise this risk for the future as much as possible.”

 

[divs4ever]

Yes, but the way some people talk here, is that we should be avoiding planes because they crash sometimes.

I do t think anyone is saying we shouldn’t be engineering it systems to try and prevent failure, but some people here literally want to stick to horse and carts, instead of moving to planes.

but i do avoid air travel ( when possible )

i LIKE the scenery and checking out the rural economy as i pass by , but i do prefer the comfort of a Greyhound bus

taking my time ( since i am on a pension ) gives plenty of time for reflection and less stress ( from some crazy trying to blow up the plane .. not to mention the circus at airports )

 

[Bellcose]

I became curious so I did some quick numbers on my activity. Last FY there were 673 debit transaction using my debit card via EFTPOS. The number of times there was a failure was one but that's due to the terminal not reading the wallet on the smartphone. However, the transaction went through when I did "tap and go" using the actual card. Used the card in places ranging from Cooktown, Sydney, Melbourne and the south coast as well as Canberra. That's a failure rate which is acceptable to me.

If people prefer to use buses instead of airlines for whatever reason my care less factor is off the charts.

Each to their own.

 

[JohnDe]

Pod cast -

"The problem is when IT sneezes we all catch a cold, and it's a reminder that 'oh maybe I should have a few hundred dollars stashed away or in my wallet' .​

Cash is King, and there is a reason why it is"​

After CrowdStrike, do we all need cash?
The catastrophic global CrowdStrike internet outage crippled electronic transactions from airlines to supermarkets. Is it too late to save cash from imminent doom?

Find out more about The Front podcast here. You can read about this story and more on The Australian’s website or on The Australian’s app.

This episode of The Front is presented and produced by Claire Harvey and edited by Joshua Burton. Our regular producer is Kristen Amiet and original music is composed by Jasper Leak.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/after-crowdstrike-do-we-all-need-cash/audio/7d2f3fc848b3153fe75aaf83e37fd0c5

 

[Craton]

When technology Is so good that people fear it might be switched off, do you really want to avoid the technology?

I mean, computers and digital tech bring billions of dollars of value into the global economy every day… sure a hacker could mess it up for a few hours here and there, but would it be worth avoiding it simply because it might fail sometimes?

It’s like saying you want to avoid owning a car because sometimes cars break down, horses are that great and cars don’t break down often enough to want to stick to horses.

Seriously?
Mate that's just trolling. My point was that placing so much reliance on the digital infrastructure and a handful of companies supplying services like CrowdStrike, M$, FB etc was and is setting us up for a big fail.

 

[Bellcose]

My point was that placing so much reliance on the digital infrastructure and a handful of companies supplying services like CrowdStrike, M$, FB etc was and is setting us up for a big fail.

It is a cause for concern for sure but I doubt it is feasible to go back due to the reliance. Water treatment plants, scheduling and control of transport services, health infrastructure and a hosts of other services are now dependant on digital infrastructure for delivery. You most certainly do not want to be on an operating table if there is a total infrastructure failure.

Think of any endeavour and there are risks associated with it. As you imply it isn't only about cash v digital payments.

 

[wayneL]

Seriously?
Mate that's just trolling. My point was that placing so much reliance on the digital infrastructure and a handful of companies supplying services like CrowdStrike, M$, FB etc was and is setting us up for a big fail.

That is his MO.

You of course are absolutely correct. And I think these people suffer recency bias, assuming everything with chug along just like they have.

However there are clues around the world in the last few years which should make us worry. The Crowdstrike and other incidents, social credit scores, programmable CBDCs etc