PETALING JAYA: Critical services such as airlines, hospitals, payment gateways and public transportation must be prepared and have a backup plan in the event of a major IT outage, advises an expert.
Philip Victor, a partner and managing director at the technology strategic advisory firm Welchman Keen, emphasised that critical infrastructure must have backup systems in place to avoid relying on a single platform.
“If critical infrastructure is affected and cannot resume operations, it clearly shows they do not have a disaster recovery plan in place to cater for such an outage.
“They need to be prepared not just for a system crash but also for major disasters like this so they can resume critical functions.
“They don’t need to resume their entire operations, but critical operations cannot stop,” he said.
The National Cyber Security Agency (Nacsa) stressed that “this was not a cyberattack, but it is a significant cybersecurity issue”.
“The impact of this outage on Malaysia is considerable. It has caused delays and operational challenges across multiple sectors, affecting both businesses and the public.
“We are actively monitoring the situation and working closely with relevant stakeholders to mitigate the impact and restore normal operations as swiftly as possible,” said a Nacsa spokesman.
The government agency overseeing cybersecurity incidents in Malaysia advised firms to look out for “temporary workarounds to mitigate potential new risks” and announcements and updates from vendors that address the issue.
Nacsa is actively collecting detailed statistics on the issue’s impact and will provide updates as soon as they become available.
“Nacsa is committed to ensuring the security and resilience of our national cyber infrastructure. We will continue to provide support and guidance to affected organisations during this challenging time,” the spokesman said.
According to CrowdStrike, the global outage was caused by “a defect found in a single content update” from the company to Windows hosts.
This caused computers running on Windows to crash and get stuck in a reboot loop, preventing users from accessing their systems.
CrowdStrike also stressed that this was not a security incident or cyberattack, adding that Mac and Linux hosts were not impacted.
CrowdStrike said the issue has been identified and isolated, and a fix has been deployed.
“We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website.
“We further recommend (that) organisations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels,” it said in a statement.
According to the Malaysian Aviation Commission, the global outage impacted the reservations and check-in systems at AirAsia and Firefly, while also causing issues with Batik Air’s reservation system.
Tour leader Syahrul Azlan was surprised by the sight of the long queues at Terminal 2 KLIA when he arrived to catch a flight to Tawau, Sabah, yesterday.
“In my 10 years of experience bringing travel groups, I’ve never seen a huge crowd like this. All the check-in counters were full due to people waiting to drop their bags and to print boarding passes,” he said, adding that the check-in kiosks were offline.
He said friends in his tour group waited for at least one-and-a-half hours just to complete the check-in process.
“I think the situation was under control. I felt that people were most understanding,” he said.
A doctor at a Kuala-Lumpur based hospital said he had trouble accessing an online medical system.
“We use this system to access patient records. Today, we keep having to restart the system and keep getting pop-ups asking to update. It was really annoying. Our IT department confirmed the issue was due to the global IT outage,” he said.
