technews-editor@acm.org
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2024 12:15:42 -0400 (EDT)
Liv McMahon, *BBC*, 19 Apr 2024
IT outages are occurring more frequently, according to Brennen Smith of Ookla, parent company of Downdetector, a platform that monitors online outages. Smith said, "Right now there's a push for these mega giants to incorporate very game-changing new technology into their products and services. I think with the push for innovation now, we're going to start to see tech companies move faster, [but] it comes at the risk of potentially breaking things." Outages can be caused by a variety of factors, but Sam Kirkman of the cybersecurity firm NetSPI emphasized that the modern Internet depends "on a fabric of really old technology."