In the United States, after a technological failure led to the temporary suspension of all Southwest Airlines flights, concerns are being raised about the resilience of the American carrier's IT infrastructure.
Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, the US company awarded the bug the failure of a firewall network distributed by a supplier, causing a temporary loss of connection to key systems.
In a statement to ReutersThe carrier said that flights had been suspended as a precaution, adding that there was no evidence of a cyber attack. It also refused to identify the supplier and did not address why this failure was not part of the company's planning.
Although the exact cause is unclear, some industry experts have questioned why Southwest Airlines' systems didn't include more redundancy. The carrier has been under fire ever since a problem with softwareDuring the Christmas vacations, more than 16,000 flights were canceled, disrupting the travel plans of 2 million customers and leading to a loss of more than 1 billion dollars.
"This would indicate that resilience is not adequately addressed in their systems," said Eric Parent, private pilot and CEO of EVA Technologies, a cybersecurity firm with offices in Canada, the US and Europe. "Some significant improvements should be considered to increase their maturity and ability to maintain operations."
The continuation of the original article via Reuters can be read here.
