Major Garmin Connect Outage

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sidefx

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#2530829 29-Jul-2020 16:06

alasta:

If they paid the ransom, does that suggest they were under-prepared for an attack of this nature? Could they have done more to prevent it in the first place?

Regardless of whether they paid or not, the fact they were down for so long indicates they were 100% under-prepared and could have done more, as simple offsite (or similar) backups of their systems and a decent disaster recovery plan should have limited their downtime to hours or even minutes....

"I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there." | Octopus Energy | Sharesies
- Richard Feynman

alasta

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#2530927 29-Jul-2020 18:51

sidefx:

alasta:

If they paid the ransom, does that suggest they were under-prepared for an attack of this nature? Could they have done more to prevent it in the first place?

Regardless of whether they paid or not, the fact they were down for so long indicates they were 100% under-prepared and could have done more, as simple offsite (or similar) backups of their systems and a decent disaster recovery plan should have limited their downtime to hours or even minutes....

I was reluctant to say that out loud because I know stuff all about IT and I figured it must be more complicated than I would understand, but I can't help feeling that it's probably the truth.

mulac

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#2531024 29-Jul-2020 19:44

sidefx:

alasta:

If they paid the ransom, does that suggest they were under-prepared for an attack of this nature? Could they have done more to prevent it in the first place?

Regardless of whether they paid or not, the fact they were down for so long indicates they were 100% under-prepared and could have done more, as simple offsite (or similar) backups of their systems and a decent disaster recovery plan should have limited their downtime to hours or even minutes....

I feel like that's a bit harsh. Let's spare a moment for Garmin who are the victims as well as their customers. I'm sure all of them were as prepared as they thought they needed to be. Hackers are finding more and more ways to get around the most secure of systems. They could have been in Garmins infrastructure for months, potentially years, prodding their way through Garmins entire infrastructure, locking backups, moving laterally across usually segregated systems and reading into how they can interrupt Garmins standard disaster recovery plans.

For those of you stating 'Im sure this wouldn't happen to x', I feel like you would have said the same positive thing about Garmin had this happened to a competitor like FitBit.

While one can always do more to secure their systems, it's impossible to prepare for every event, and sometimes you get caught out. Have a little sympathy, show your Kiwi side and have a little patience as they work through this, the team on the ground will be struggling big time working long hours to get it up and running again.

sidefx

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#2531189 30-Jul-2020 08:26

mulac:

I feel like that's a bit harsh. Let's spare a moment for Garmin who are the victims as well as their customers. I'm sure all of them were as prepared as they thought they needed to be. Hackers are finding more and more ways to get around the most secure of systems. They could have been in Garmins infrastructure for months, potentially years, prodding their way through Garmins entire infrastructure, locking backups, moving laterally across usually segregated systems and reading into how they can interrupt Garmins standard disaster recovery plans.

For those of you stating 'Im sure this wouldn't happen to x', I feel like you would have said the same positive thing about Garmin had this happened to a competitor like FitBit.

While one can always do more to secure their systems, it's impossible to prepare for every event, and sometimes you get caught out. Have a little sympathy, show your Kiwi side and have a little patience as they work through this, the team on the ground will be struggling big time working long hours to get it up and running again.

Short answer is I don't want to be sympathetic because I really like the Garmin product (There's little doubt in my mind they have the best product for Outdoorsy types and athletes) but want them to take this as an opportunity to improve their systems and preparedness rather than just say "ohh well, they're the victims, nothing they can do about it"

While there's a small chance these hackers may have had access to Garmin's systems for years, etc, etc, I'd say it's just as likely if not more, that they were woefully unprepared and didn't spend enough time planning for something like this which is sadly becoming more and more common.

TBH, the other side of the "Kiwi attitude" you speak of (I mean the "no 8 wire, she'll be right, don't worry about it mate" attitude rather than the charitable, sympathetic, can do side - which is great) makes it even more likely that this sort of thing could happen to an NZ company... I'm not trying to be a dick here, just saying if you work in IT you can probably learn something from this unfortunate episode.

"I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there." | Octopus Energy | Sharesies
- Richard Feynman

alasta

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#2531191 30-Jul-2020 08:35

To be fair to Garmin, over the last week my Fenix has performed really well as a standalone device even when it had no connectivity to Garmin Connect. Contrast that with the erratic behaviour I have recently experienced with my iPhone for no apparent reason, and it's easy to see why I got rid of my Apple Watch in favour of the Fenix.

Maybe there are lessons for Garmin to learn from this, or maybe they were just really unlucky. Either way, I'm reasonably confident it won't happen again anytime soon.

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