Companies must take responsibility for technology risks and test their ability to withstand disruptions, Matthew Hardman, Hitachi Ventara's chief technology officer for Asia-Pacific, said after a global Microsoft outage disrupted services.
Infrastructure providers can offer protection, but customers still have to assess their exposure and prepare for different failures. Hardman spoke on CNA's East Asia Tonight, published Nov. 13, following disruption to email and other online services.
Disruptions can arise from several causes, including an incorrect setting on a server, a natural event or damage to a cable during excavation. A cyberattack is only one possible explanation for a service failure.
Hardman said cyberattacks attract attention because they cause concern among organisations, but other failures also require preparation. His examples described possible causes of disruption and did not establish what caused the Microsoft outage.
His approach to working with customers involves building several layers of protection against service failures. Organisations cannot depend on a single service always being available and need to balance the risks they take.
“You can't outsource risk,” he said. “Risk is something you have to own as an organization.”
Companies take responsibility through their choices about technology infrastructure. Providers can offer some assurance that their systems can withstand disruptions, but the organisation using those systems must assess its own risks and test different scenarios.
The distinction places responsibility on customers to examine their preparations even when another company supplies the underlying technology. Hardman also referred to earlier technology failures as a reason for organisations to consider different ways of reducing risk.
Microsoft said it had made limited progress restoring services more than 12 hours after the outage began, with millions of users unable to access applications including Outlook, Teams and Copilot. The company found no indications of malicious activity.
The disruption continued through business hours in East Asia. Government communications in Japan went down, and ministries used alternative methods, including paper documents, to keep communicating.
Japanese medical facilities, access to patient records and local financial institutions were unaffected. Major Korean companies lost access to email, disrupting coordination and work, while workers in Hong Kong's financial district had to work offline.
Singapore's government technology agency said some government systems, including email, were affected, while emergency services and the national digital identity system remained operational. The agency was working with Microsoft to restore services.
Hardman did not identify the cause of the outage or give a timetable for recovery. His remarks addressed how organisations should prepare for disruptions and assess their responsibilities when relying on outside technology providers.
