Kevin Beaver's Security Blog

GoDaddy: ‘Malfunction’ as the new scapegoat?

We’ve been hearing about ‘computer glitch’ for a while. That’s what the talking heads on the news always cite when something goes awry with a computer system. Perhaps ‘malfunction’ is the new scapegoat? That’s the route GoDaddy is taking. They say it was a ‘malfunction’, not hacking, that took them and presumably hundreds of thousands (millions?) of other systems offline for hours yesterday.

I’m sure it had nothing to do with poor planning…or people making bad choices. That’d be too simple…and too responsible. It’s easier to blame computer problems on the obscure – something that can’t be understood – much less proven – by the general population, even forensics analysts.
 
Calling a network outage a ‘malfunction’ is similar to how legal counsel encourage executives to refer to security breaches as ‘events’. In the end, a business continuity problem is a business continuity problem. It’s your responsibility.

Stuff’s going to happen. You just have to ask yourself what needs to be done to minimize the impact to your business. Don’t wait until the you know what hits the fan to try to figure it out. Here’s some material I’ve written that can help you get started down this path.