Can you imagine living even for a single day in a city where internet services get completely disrupted, bringing the entire city to its knees? Today when the internet has become the backbone of our modern-day life, it is quite nerve racking to imagine such a scenario even for a fleeting moment. But the US city Jacksonville experienced this unimaginable scenario in September 2024, when the city’s many basic services were left reeling under an unprecedented network outage.
Although several months have passed since the Jacksonville Computer Network Issue, it is critical that we draw some important lessons from this incident. This will ensure that such disruptive incident never occurs, either in the United States or in any other global cities, sparing the common citizens and residents not only from major inconvenience but also catastrophic impact.
What really Happened?
September 11, 2024, could have been any other day for the millions of people living in the Jacksonville city of Florida. Probably many may have felt a sense of sadness in their remembrance of the thousands of innocent victims who lost their lives in the deadly September 11 terrorist attack. But it turned out that September 11 will be remembered for another inauspicious event that brought the lives of Jacksonville residents to a grinding halt.
The first sign of the nightmarish event began to unfold when people of Jacksonville were unable to access important local government websites. Parallelly, all work in the Jacksonville’s all-important government offices came to a standstill as internet services saw a complete disruption.
This included local courts, state attorney’s office, fire department, public defender’s offices, and tax collection offices among other offices.
As news about the massive internet disruption spread across the city, most people were quick to label it as yet another network outage problem and will probably take only a few hours before the normal internet service resumes. But they could not have been more wrong; as the day further unfolded, it was pretty clear that this wasn’t an ordinary network outage problem.
Soon conspiracy theories started emerging, with many labeling this incident as an attack. Not a terrorist attack but a cyberattack. However, these theories soon fizzled away as the FBI and local police soon dismissed any suspicion of a cyberattack. So, the billion-dollar question was: what really caused the Jacksonville Computer Network Issue? There has to be something that caused an issue of this magnitude and scale that apparently derailed the entire city for more than 24 hours.
It turned out that it wasn’t a single issue but multiple issues that caused this massive problem. What were these multiple issues? Let’s find out in our next section.
However, before moving to the next section, let’s first briefly look into the impact of the incident.
- Complete service disruption: As mentioned above, citizens were unable to access important government websites, including Jacksonville.gov and jaxready.com. Even the local government’s mobile application remained completely inaccessible for nearly two days, causing much frustration for residents.
- Emergency services impacted: Although most of the emergency services including health emergency remained operational, some of the other critical emergency services got affected during the massive outage. This included Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department (JFRD), which was unable to render its services efficiently as it experienced serious internal issues in their mobile data terminals (MDT). The 630 CITY helpline also got impacted during the outage.
- Operational Disruption: In the wake of unprecedented outage, almost all municipal offices including local courts were forced to revert to manual process (paper work); adversely affecting their operational efficiency.
- Financial Loss: Although there is no official record available about the financial loss, it is estimated that Jacksonville city suffered loss in the tune of millions due to the massive outage. More so because the outage lasted for nearly two days.
What possibly caused the massive disruption?
After investigation by local agencies, it came to light that this massive disruption was possibly caused by multiple issues. These multiple issues were as follows:
- Aging infrastructure: Turned out that most of the digital infrastructure in the Jacksonville city, including routers, switches and servers, had become completely outdated. Their replacement was long overdue. The city’s digital infrastructure was clearly in shambolic condition and hence the possibility of major hardware failure or malfunction can never be ruled out.
- Human error: The angle of man-made error was not ruled out either. Sometimes undue human intervention can accidentally lead to incorrect settings in routers and firewall. This can block access to major online services or even cause an outage problem.
- Network congestion and low bandwidth issue: The Over-load of high data traffic could have created too much pressure on the city’s bandwidth. By all probability, Jacksonville had limited bandwidth to optimally handle unduly high traffic especially during the peak hour.
Important lessons learnt
Now let’s shift our focus to the core issue. It goes without saying that several important lessons can be drawn from this disruptive incident.
As mention above, these lessons will help in taking preventive measures in the future and save citizens from undue suffering as well as colossal financial losses.
Periodic and active monitoring:
The one unarguable lesson that can be drawn from the Jacksonville Computer Network Issue is the importance of proactive monitoring of the digital infrastructure. Active monitoring can help on several fronts.
Firstly, it can help in identifying potential problems before the problems escalate and cause a major outage. Secondly, it can help in ascertaining whether any important hardware (routers and servers) needs an urgent replacement.
The active monitoring and maintenance should be carried out in all the government offices at least once in every six months.
Invest in robust IT infrastructure
All government offices must purchase only high quality and world-class IT products, like servers, routers, software, optic cables, and switches. They must avoid purchasing substandard products as they are not resilient and unlikely to withstand any potential failure or network outage.
Good quality IT products are also long-lasting and requires minimum maintenance.
Create inhouse IT department or outsource:
All municipality offices must preferably create an inhouse IT department that will be primarily responsible for carrying out active monitoring and maintenance of the IT system. It must hire only the best and most experienced people in the IT department, which invariably will ensure efficient management of the IT system.
If creating an inhouse IT department is not financially feasible then municipalities must outsource their IT maintenance work to a reputed third-party company.
Invest in robust backup system:
All local and government offices must mandatorily take backup of all their important files and documents. They must preferably take the backup in external hard drives. This will ensure that access to important documents and files remain completely intact even in the aftermath of massive disruption or outage.
Improving the coordination during crisis:
All government offices must put in place a clear protocol for communication and actionable strategies during outage and network disruption. Employees should be given proper training especially for this kind of crisis management. This could ensure efficient management of crisis, service continuity and also maintaining the public trust.
Conclusion:
Jacksonville Computer Network Issue brings forth the critical issue of the proactive maintenance of IT systems in all the municipal and government offices. In today’s digital age, no government offices can ill afford to be negligent about their IT system. Apart from preventing massive financial losses, it also helps in upholding and maintaining the public trust. Continued and uninterpreted service is symbolic of the government’s unwavering commitment towards its citizens. And the surest way to uphold and adhere to this commitment is to sincerely implement all the solutions and lessons as discussed above.