11:35 am, September 4, 2024
It’s the end of the world as we know it… as sung by REM in their song released in November 1987.
I found myself singing it in my head on July 19 when the world ground to a halt due to the global IT issue.
Thousands of flights were cancelled, banks couldn’t process payments, hospital operations were cancelled, GPs were only seeing the sickliest of patients, TV stations went off the air and many companies simply couldn’t process business.
Ironically, the software update that caused the problems came from a cybersecurity tech firm – CrowdStrike – and the global outage resulted in $14bn being wiped from its stock market valuation. Ouch!
Even backing up critical business data is now usually thrown into the cloud, and the global IT crisis shone a light on how much we rely on IT to do the simplest of tasks.
Back in 2004, the internet was still decentralised; fast-forward 20 years and it’s run by the big three: Google, Amazon and Microsoft. If something goes wrong with one of those three or a third party they depend on, the effects are felt worldwide!
While the world didn’t quite end up like Mad Max (apart from my hometown, which has been like that since the ’80s), it did make me wonder how we survived without computers at all!
Our own IT department did a fantastic job of getting us back up and running while the rest of the world was still struggling.
We also made sure to keep our customers and dealers updated by posting on our websites and social media channels.
It did make me consider what the world would have been like if all customer records, invoices, compliance data – the lot – had just vanished!
Then I found myself thinking, what would a dealer do if the same happened to them?
I would seriously recommend making sure that your dealership’s data is backed up on a physical hard drive, especially data such as customer records, Financial Conduct Authority records, account details and your stock records.
Don’t depend too heavily on cloud storage, as it can be unreliable. Keep your dealership’s systems up to date and regularly check that your back-ups and your Windows recovery processes work properly.
While I know there are many daily tasks in running a dealership, if you’re still not convinced, imagine what it would be like to get to the office one morning and find that everything on the computers was just gone!
It gives me a knot in my stomach just thinking about it, so it always pays to be careful, just in case!
Pictured at top: Flashback to passengers at Gatwick Airport as airlines continued to deal with the fallout from the global IT failure caused by CrowdStrike. Image credit: Luke O’Reilly/PA
This column appears in the current edition of Car Dealer – issue 198 – along with news, reviews, features and much more! Download and read it for FREE here!
