Is Google Down or is it Just Me?
The unthinkable has happened! You open your laptop, bring up Google Chrome and BAM!
You’re hit with a 500 error. Is the WiFi down? Is your browser playing up? In a fleet of panic, you take to Google to find out if it’s your own internal server causing a mishap, or if the world has imploded.
Doh - Google isn’t working. To Twitter you go! And the number one trending term is #GoogleDOWN.
As annoying as not being able to watch cat videos on YouTube may be, when it comes to work productivity, server downtime can lead to vast numbers of hours lost. which is exactly what happened earlier this week (Monday 14th December 2020) when businesses across the globe downed tools due to an unfortunate Google mishap.
So, what really happened? And, more importantly, what processes can you put in place to ensure productivity in the workplace is maintained during an outage?
We caught up with Ellie Upson from Gloucestershire-based cyber security firm, Wembley Partners who shared the following words of wisdom.
Outages for major service providers can cause huge disruptions for a whole range of organisations. The incident at Google is reported to have caused disruption for millions of users according to Forbes – from schools who had to cancel online classes to large organisations who rely on Google for email and authentication services. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to predict when these events will unfold, and how long they will last – but you can, and should, plan how your organisation will react and respond in order to remain resilient to unexpected changes.”
To minimise disruption, developing a business continuity plan can help you to prioritise your response to an incident. This will allow you to maintain business operations, or, if necessary, communicate information to your key clients.
The key steps to this process are:
Identify critical systems, processes and assets
Develop a regular data backup plan so you can access or restore key information from an alternative storage location during an incident
Assign key responsibilities within your organisation so that systems are restored or moved to alternative services in a prioritised way
Determine the impact an incident could have on your reputation and build incident response communication plans for critical partners, so you know who you will need to contact in the event of different incident scenarios and how to get in touch with them.
These plans should be stored in a place that can be easily accessed by key parties in the event of an incident – and you may want to consider having a hard copy that can be accessed if your IT systems have failed! These plans should be regularly updated and reviewed, so all responsible people know and understand what is expected of them and how to undertake it.
These activities won’t stop a cyber incident from happening, but they can help to minimise the damage, disruption, reputational harm and costs that such an event can incur - and can help you to quickly get back to doing whatever it is that you do best!
Online and cloud based services are a fantastic tool for small businesses. They can really help businesses operate more efficiently – however if you are considering a move to a digital environment, then it’s important to think ahead and consider two key points – 1. is the system appropriately secure for what you are using it for and 2. what will you do in the event of an outage? If you think of these things early in the process, you can work towards building an organisation that is secure and cyber resilient by design.
Wembley Partners supports and works with the UK National Cyber Security Centre and more information for small businesses is available from the NCSC here: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/small-business-guidance--response-and-recovery
Not satisfied with our research, we sought the information straight from the horse’s mouth, and reached out to the search engine giant to see what they had to say for themselves.
Their response, whilst polite and well articulated, left us none the wiser. However what we have learned from the event is that if the world should crumble (aka, Google should go down…), we need to have an effective, well thought out, Business Continuity Plan in place to ensure our own downtime is kept to a minimum.
The use of Twitter in those dark times when technology trouble strikes is more important than ever. We can learn a lot from this, as a good lesson in customer service via social media.
We use Twitter for 2 reasons predominantly; to moan about stuff when it's broken and to connect with other people (journalists) to get them to share your moanings!
Seriously though, monitoring brand sentiment via social media is crucial for brands to stay on top of the conversations that are happening about them and in their market. Within 10 minutes of #GoogleDOWN reaching the top trending spots, #hotmail also made a resurgence as people jumped back into 2010 and fired up the old hotmail accounts.
If we were managing Hotmail’s social media accounts (stuff of dreams), we’d be jumping on that action and getting involved in the top tweets.
And from Google, well, let’s just hope they up their game a little. During the entire 45 minute episode, we didn’t spot a single tweet from them around the matter. Not great for maintaining trust.
It also shows the incredible importance of having a confirmed crisis comms plan in place. The above statement from Google may have reassured us a little, and pre-empting events like this, with a strong action plan for how to respond can help alleviate panic at a time when slight chaos may be ensuing.
How has this tarnished your perception of the brand, if at all? Does your loyalty for Google run deeper than a 45 minute outage, or are you severing ties and reverting back to yahoo for good?
