British Airways found themselves in hot water last month when an IT systems failure forced the airline to cancel hundreds of flights, leaving approximately 75,000 passengers stranded at Heathrow and Gatwick airports during the bank holiday weekend. The company issued a statement blaming the outage on a 'power surge', but a number of data centre experts have disputed that claim, and this calamitous disruption has drawn yet more attention to numerous IT failings throughout the industry at large.
For example, here's a quote from a Guardian article published on the 30th of May 2017 (a few days on from the IT failure):
"The airline industry is notorious for running outdated infrastructure long after standards have improved. In December, for instance, it was revealed that passenger booking systems used by multiple airlines were easy prey for hackers."
The fallout from this incident is still causing problems for British Airways, and their parent company IAG has reportedly lost £170 million in value since the bank holiday weekend, making this whole mess a particularly severe illustration of the importance of ensuring the smooth and secure operation of your company's IT systems.
Whether you run a huge corporation like BA or a small business serving a small, local customer base, you need to make sure your computer systems are safeguarded from attacks and outages. As part of this effort, we strongly recommend planning and implementing an information security management system (ISMS) that conforms to ISO 27001 standards.
Need help putting an ISMS in place and achieving ISO 27001 certification? Contact NPT Management Systems today to discuss your requirements with our ISO experts.
