CrowdStrike Outage Shows How Vulnerable We Have Become

“Starting with a faulty security update in Australia, the wave spread around the planet, grounding planes, freezing banking services and preventing medical operations…an unprecedented global outage of vital information technology infrastructure triggered by a single company having a bad tech day.”

In this op-ed first published by Tech Policy Press, Susie Alegre says the immense damage incurred around the world on July 19 following the CrowdStrike glitch “should give us pause to ask some basic questions that are vital for our future: What do we really need technology for? How do we protect the infrastructure we need? And how do we make sure we can still carry on without it?”

“Recently, the European Union set a global precedent with the first AI-driven regulation, the EU AI Act, which encourages investment in AI research and development and the promotion of ethical standards that enhance consumer trust across industries. Developing countries, for their part, see both a need and an opportunity to catch up on adopting regulatory frameworks, while enhancing their representation on the global stage.”

Renata Thiébaut says that in countries that still lack infrastructure, aligning regulations with strategies for economic growth could create fertile ground for innovation. Further, multilateral institutions need to establish a dedicated, permanent vehicle for engendering responsible AI — one that provides full representation to Global South countries.

Since it was created, the Communications Security Establishment, the national agency that provides Canada’s government with information technology security as well as foreign signals intelligence, has struggled to embrace transparency, writes Matt Malone. And, he says, Bill C-26, a proposed new cybersecurity law currently undergoing its final stages of review in the Senate, will soon make evading transparency even easier.

In this critique, Malone argues that although the bill represents a much-needed and important reform in some respects, as currently drafted it “promotes a security policy based on secrecy — an approach highly unlikely to engender goodwill from businesses or public confidence in our democratic institutions.”