We may not be prepared for a large-scale “digital blackout”. Researchers are studying the consequences.
No drinking water, no cash, no online communication – a scenario that hardly anyone in Austria can imagine. But we could be confronted with these consequences if an integral part of our lives were to fail: the Internet.
According to Statistics Austria, around 90 percent of Austrian households have internet access. The “Isidor” research project, which is headed by the Institute for Production Management and Logistics at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, is to investigate the consequences of a long-term, large-scale failure and develop plans for state crisis and disaster management.
Hardly researched
“The entire social life, economic and private, is permeated by two technologies: electricity and information and communication technology,” says project employee Jaro Krieger-Lamina from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) of the futurezone. While one has been dealing with a long-term power failure (“blackout”) for a long time, such an Internet failure is still largely unexplored.
The blackout emergency plans would also serve to cope with an Internet failure, but what the infrastructure looks like in this country, which areas would be particularly affected and which measures would be suitable, is the subject of research.
Designed to be fail-safe
Basically, the Internet is designed to be decentralized and fail-safe: if a node in the network structure is lost, the information can be transmitted via other nodes. According to the expert, however, there are also a few neuralgic points. If attackers bring this to a standstill, large areas of the Internet would be affected. “But that's not an easy thing.”
But it is possible. Massive cyber attacks occurred in Estonia in 2007, including against authorities. Public life was severely restricted as a result. There was also a massive failure in Sierra Leone in 2018, and other countries on the West African coast were also affected. A submarine cable was damaged here. Depending on the extent, software and hardware problems can be resolved relatively quickly. If, on the other hand, there were a longer power outage that would also paralyze the Internet, we would have more serious problems, says the expert.
Dependency
Regardless of the cause, the research team deals with the effects of an Internet failure. The digitization processes of the past decades have created a great dependency. “Today, numerous processes run over the Internet. At the same time, one has little experience with supply interruptions in a company that normally works reliably. ”For cost reasons, many companies also use cloud services, which several branches can access. “This not only raises the question of data protection or industrial espionage, but also of what is still running when you can no longer access it,” he explains.
If a large-scale internet failure lasts longer than 3 days, the question of logistics also arises. “Warehousing is reduced in many areas because it causes high costs,” he says. Production takes place “just in time” and goods are delivered when required. Since the coordination is internet-based, supplies could be omitted.
No cash
The drinking water supply is also internet-based and could temporarily stall. According to a report by the Austrian Association for Gas and Water, the control of the drinking water systems can be switched to remote control independent of the Internet in an emergency. Traffic would also slow down, especially since traffic lights are controlled via the Internet. ATMs would also fail. According to Krieger-Lamina, research is still under way to determine which of the most urgent infrastructural problems would be and how well operators of critical infrastructures are prepared for such a crisis.
Hospitals are prepared for infrastructure failures. You can manage without an external computer network – inpatient treatment can be maintained. First of all, there is the all-clear: According to Krieger-Lamina, a nationwide internet failure is fundamentally very unlikely. However, it doesn't hurt to be prepared for it anyway.
