This week marks an ignominious anniversary. On August 13, 2003, a single outage in the electric grid cascaded across eight northeastern states, putting 55 million people in the dark for days, and thousands of businesses out of business. The Great Blackout of ’03 was a catastrophic reminder that we’re all one nosy squirrel in a transformer away from an instantaneous, put-you-out-of-business event.
Fifteen years later, the evidence isn’t in favor of less exposure for the next 15. Consider this report from CNBC: “The FBI warned Russian computer hackers had compromised hundreds of thousands of home and office routers.” And this one from the Department of Homeland Security: “Russian government cyber actors have been targeting U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, including energy, nuclear and commercial facilities, since at least March 2016.”
In 2003, most businesses surveyed reported they weren’t unaware of a potential business disruption, but incredibly, they also admitted they weren’t prepared for one. Thankfully, that response is different these days, as one of our recent online polls indicated.