In Wachowskis’ world a glitch in the Matrix can be spotted by that dreadful feeling of déjà vu.
But in the real world a glitch in the IT and computing matrix is often much harder to spot and, despite having some of the best Systems Developers around, even more difficult to stop once it gets going.
Take the curious case of HSBC, where an IT glitch left businesses who use the online banking service unable to pay staff – meaning around 275,000 people were without their payslips on the eve of a bank holiday weekend.
Cue fist-shaking, rude-worded rage.
The recent HSBC system failure is, however, just the latest in a long line of notorious IT disasters.
Here we look at three of the biggest and ask what might have been done to prevent calamity – and whether you are the IT person who could have saved the day.
Arianne 5
A serious software malfunction, over £8 billion lost, and a whole lot of mess.
The Arianne 5 was meant to be a dependable, high-capacity replacement for the Arianne 4 launcher, designed to launch four brand spanking new satellites into orbit.
A flaw – entirely missed by Software Engineers – that tried to cram a 64-bit number into a 16-bit space caused the control system to explode 40 seconds after take-off.
It’s not likely that Software Engineers will be so careless next time.
A little bit of groundwork from a team of System Analysts, some extra overtime from the System Testers and we’re already moving into a situation where everything is tip-top before take-off.
Millennium Bug
Who could forget this one? The millennium bug was such a hyped-up horror story that many believed we were facing the end of humanity as we knew it.
The stock markets would crash, the world’s biggest businesses would crumble and airplanes would fall from the sky as the world went up in flames.
Why? It was all because computer programs had been coded with two digit dates instead of four and the millennium was upon us – a mistake programmers won’t make again in a hurry, or at least for a few more millennia.
Had the right foresighted System Programmers been working in IT infrastructure at the time of design, it would never have been such a problem.
Thankfully, come midnight on December 31, 2000, it turned out to be much ado about nothing, and everything continued as normal – although fixing the date bug is reputed to have cost £400 billion.
This was one bug that really did make a lot of people sick!
Soviet Missile Warning System
Way back in 1983 a faulty Soviet Union missile warning system almost catapulted the world into World War III.
A glitch in the software claimed the US had launched five ballistic missiles at the USSR and the alarms almost triggered retaliatory strikes that would have killed millions.
The program that filtered false missile detections didn’t work – but thankfully Lt Col Stanislav Petrov sensed it was false, as an attack would surely involve more missiles. Phew!
The Programmer Analyst got away with it then, if only just, and hopefully lessons have been learned by the Software Engineers of today.
The warning system should have been properly tested, and Programmer Analysts nowadays have to be as stringent as possible with any defence systems.
The silver lining is that, after such a near miss, the talents and skill sets of IT Consultants are recognised as being more essential than ever.
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