Cyber world of crypto mining hit by real life natural disaster
Jul 18th, 2018
No way to escape reality: Cyber world of crypto mining hit by real life natural disaster.
We already discussed how the allegedly super-safe world of crypto-currencies is not so safe and news keep pouring in.
However we are sure very few though that flooding could cripple the synthetic world of crypto-currencies. Years ago we wrote in this blog about a CEO who thought that our approach to multihazard risks was “too technical” and not “enough business oriented”. That CEO was taught a very hard lesson by Mother nature. That lesson should be learnt by others, and in other spaces.
Cyber world of crypto mining hit by real life natural disaster
Nowadays, with bit coin and other crypto-currencies, the world is taking huge capitals to the cyber sphere, blinded to real world natural hazards.
People forget that good old real-life natural or man-made disasters can have nefarious consequences on any industry, business, infrastructure, including of course hi-tech.
Meteorological events and climate change have also the potential to alter functionalities, as recently reported by a study related to the US coastal areas.
taken from “Rising Seas Could Cause Problems For Internet Infrastructure” July 16, 20182:53 PM ET NPR
For example, in 2015, a heat wave in Australia fried a data centre air conditioners, stopping internet service for hours. In 2012, Superstorm Sandy flood related blackouts drowned the underground data cables provoking a “catastrophic failure.”
Finally, after Hurricane Irma hit Florida last year, the Miami Herald reported weeks long Internet blackout.
Recent news also reported flooding in China destroying mining hardware provoking heavy economic losses .
This is the reason why in every risk assessment we perform we look convergent at natural and man made hazards. In a paper we wrote in follow-up to a major multi-hazard risk assessment which included, of course, also cyber risks we showed how to apply the ORE platform concepts. The risk assessment process includes of course a risk triage leading to a clear mitigation road-map.
Common siloed approach keep risks split by source and then treat them separately. Those approaches will inevitably lead to costly misunderstanding and garbling the road map to sustainable mitigation.
Tagged with: crypto mining, Cyber world, natural disaster, real life
Category: Consequences, Mitigations, Optimum Risk Estimates, Probabilities, Risk analysis, Risk management
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