Should Security People Abandon Optus

Should Security People Abandon Optus After Recent Outage.

Should Security People Abandon Optus – Should security people abandon Optus after the recent outage caused by flooding of Cisco PE core servers during a firmware upgrade – SEN thinks not.

For security applications, redundancy is everything and the difficulties experienced by Optus should serve to underline the importance of using multiple carriers for every application wherever possible, as well as highlighting the reliability of distributed intelligence.

Security people considering the vulnerabilities of key pieces of security infrastructure also need to be factoring in network components, cable infrastructure and power systems – if this sounds familiar it’s probably because the security industry has always thought this way.

Should Security People Abandon Optus

The responses of Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin and head of networks Lambo Kanagaratnam to a senate hearing on November 17 further highlighted the importance of redundancy – even to the point of empowering core portions of a security system with communications independence in extremis.

“We have multiple layers of redundancy, both geographical redundancy, physical redundancy, power redundancy; it is highly unusual for all of the different networks which are segregated to be down at the same time,” Rosmarin told the inquiry.

Meanwhile Kanagaratnam said Optus did a network outage exercise in October, but it wasn’t for a full outage on the network.

“We didn’t have a plan in place for that specific scale of outage – it was unexpected,” Kanagaratnam said. “We have high levels of redundancy and it’s not something we expected to happen.”

This Optus outage, during which 228 emergency calls to triple zero could not be connected, doesn’t only highlight the importance of networks, but communications, including help point comms, and even site Wi-Fi services that might be vital during emergency lockdowns.

Should Security People Abandon Optus

Recent floods and bushfires, which threw emergency services back onto UHF and VHF comms, underline the fact that communications infrastructure has multiple vulnerabilities, and its support should be considered in an holistic way that’s mindful of the organic nature of digital solutions.

Things to consider include power and power backup, overlapping coverage, careful location of towers to areas of least vulnerability – for security managers on high security sites, that might include assessing physical installations, as well as serious consideration of satellite services.

Any strategy should also include total failure procedures involving the actioning of security teams and key staff using UHF or even HF radio, or failover arrangements between a chosen supplier and a backup carrier.

Notwithstanding the fact Optus has provided reliable services to the electronic security industry for many decades, something else worth considering is that Optus management and engineering teams will take lessons from the outage that will make for more robust services in the future.

The company may also be a little more likely to sharpen its pencil on price just now, if you ask nicely.

You can find out more about Optus here or read more SEN news here.

“Should Security People Abandon Optus After Recent Outage.”