by Thinus Ferreira
eMedia is silent and doesn't want to talk about the cyber emergency that plunged eNCA (DStv 403) into chaos on Friday morning and into repeat padding after its TV news channel was forced to cut original programming when it became one of the victims of CrowdStrike's error updates of Microsoft's Windows.
From its Hyde Park headquarters eNCA was forced to run repeat filler until 09:55 on Friday morning, after it was able to go back to original broadcasting but still without any on-air graphics, a lower-third banner or scrolling headlines, which it managed to return later during the day.
eNCA competitors SABC News (DStv 404) and Newzroom Afrika appeared unaffected on Friday morning while eNCA had to broadcast filler due to what is called the biggest IT outage in history.
In the United Kingdom Sky News (DStv 402) was forced off the air, and broadcasters elsewhere in the world like Australia's ABC were also affected.
Besides broadcasters like eNCA, CrowdStrike's Windows shutdown also caused a debilitating shutdown of transportation systems like airlines and railways, hospitals, banks and shops globally - the biggest IT shutdown an internet-connected world has yet experienced.
CrowdStrike a cyber security company took responsibility for the update error that took millions of Windows computers offline on Friday.
Ironically, CrowdStrike as an antivirus company has a Falcon virus scanner, used by around 29 000 corporate business clients worldwide to specifically protect their Windows infrastructure. A wrong update pushed through to Falcon broke Windows on Friday and resulted in the so-called "blue screen of death".
TVwithThinus asked eMedia and eNCA about how DStv subscribers saw eNCA visibly affected on Friday morning when it had to resort to airing repeats. eMedia said it had no comment.
eMedia and eNCA were asked when it realised there were problems and when it foresee that normal and original programming could continue, and what eNCA started to do to find a workaround solution while it switched to repeat programming. eMedia didn't want to answer these questions.
Most importantly, eMedia and eNCA were also asked what eNCA will now change because of this IT shutdown that showed eNCA - as well as all other companies using CrowdStrike technology - that there is a glaring gap and vulnerability that could prevent it from functioning. eMedia had no comment.
eNCA sources told TVwithThinus on Friday morning that the inability to do regular programming "the way it's supposed to look is directly because Windows is stuck" and that affected graphic creation and output.
Sky News was quick to comment and to issue a statement on Friday morning and said "Sky News has not been able to broadcast live TV this morning, we apologise for the interruption. All the news is still available online, on the Sky News app, website, and across our social media accounts. We are working hard to restore all services."
CrowdStrike's faulty code update has now prompted companies and governments to ask serious questions over how they will be able to not just prevent a recurrence but to implement other options to continue to keep functioning during a worldwide IT outage.
While the SABC, Newzroom Afrika and other broadcasters like the BBC make use of the same software as eNCA, they were unaffected and were able to broadcast normally. Some, like Sky News and eNCA were effectively forced off the air.
It's unclear as of yet whether and how eMedia and rival broadcasters like the SABC, MultiChoice and TV news channels like Newzroom Afrika will have to relook and scrutinise the redundancy, security and failsafe backup options regarding their critical digital broadcasting infrastructure.
Gary Marcus, professor emeritus at New York University, told The Washington Post "We have, as this shows, lots of infrastructure relying on single points of failure".
"Absolutely nothing guarantees that we won't have another similar incident either accidentally or maliciously."
Author Brian Klaas who wrote Fluke: Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We do Matters, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that "we've engineered social systems that are extremely prone to catastrophic risk because we have optimised to the limit - with no slack - in hyper-connected systems. A tiny failure is now an enormous one".
"Modern information-based society is based on a very fragile foundation," writes security researcher Richard Forno for The Conversation.
"Governments and companies alike will need to emphasise resilience in designing networks and systems. This means taking steps to avoid creating single points of failure in infrastructure, software and workflows that an adversary could target or a disaster could make worse."
"Organizations will need to renew their commitment to best practices in cybersecurity and general IT management. For example, having a robust backup system in place can make recovery from such incidents easier and minimize data loss."
