This problem was supposed to be the source of massive computer outages worldwide.
How ironic was it that I’d see shades of Y2K all over again on a random Friday morning?
The date problem was pervasive and not just limited to ancient systems.
Because earlier systems used a two-digit year format, newer onesadopted the same format for compatibility.
Millions of users around the world woke up to their machines blue-screening.
Immediately, the first thing that came to my mind wereflashbacks of people talking about the Y2K Bug.
Lucas Gouveia / Cianna Garrison / How-To Geek
This was exactly what experts said would happen, but there was a significant twist.
In the early millennium, not everyone had smartphones in their pockets.
It breaks servers that keep web pages online and potentially even access points people use to get mobile internet.
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What Caused the Internet to Fall Apart?
CrowdStrike is a company that provides cloud-based security for several thousand companies.
Its clients include Fortune 500 companies, banks, and others around the world.
It first started with 911 centers and transportation hubs reporting issues with their systems late Thursday.
What Y2K Taught Us And CrowdStrike Reminded Us
We’re a highly technological society.
The internet gives us the power to find anything we’re looking for with just a few keystrokes.
It also connects us to friends who may be in completely different time zones.
The CrowdStrike outage reminds us that many businesses around the world are highly dependent on computer systems.
It should also suggest to these businesses that they have backup systems just in case.
During the Y2K era, most systems had redundancies and fallbacks in case the systems failed.
For a few hours after it started, people thought it was a malware or terrorist cyber-attack.
Are We Any Better Prepared for Something Like This?
This may lead to regulatorsexamining the sector more closely.
However, it also underlines the lack of response time in dealing with a system-wide threat like this.
It’s both a wake-up call and a warning that we should probably listen to.
It would take several of these outages in concert to bring down the global internet.
However, we should still be wary.
