Facebook Outage – It’s all about the Pipes

In case anyone needed to be reminded, yesterday’s dramatic Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram outage drove home, once again, how dependent we have all become on ubiquitous connectivity and our favorite applications and online services. But it goes far beyond just online fun and games and keeping in touch with our various communities and interests.

Businesses, governments, utilities, healthcare, educational institutions, and – well, everybody, are significantly impacted when telecom and datacom aren’t working.  A New York Times article highlighted several instances of small businesses who are completely dependent on Facebook and WhatsApp for orders and payments. These are direct impacts and there are a host of indirect impacts as well, ranging from login services to advertising, click-through, and more. When your communications aren’t working, nothing is working.

But as I said in the title – it’s really all about the pipes. Communications Service Providers (CSPs) own the infrastructure that makes it possible for all of us to access services and applications like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. The current Facebook outage shows that even huge companies, with the world’s most advanced IT operations, are vulnerable. Imagine how vulnerable individuals and small and medium businesses (SMBs) must feel. We saw yesterday that the world of online connectivity is risky, with the ability to negatively impact millions of people. There are other kinds of dangers out there which can also impact your life and we can help with them.

While it is not yet clear what caused yesterday’s outage, there are a lot of vulnerabilities that can be directly addressed. Fortunately, the CSPs of the world are perfectly positioned to solve SMB vulnerability to communications problems like cybersecurity and traffic congestion. CSPs own the pipes and can see everything travelling to and from their consumer and SMB customers. Potentially, this gives them the ability to spot and block malware, prevent access to dangerous websites, mitigate distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and prioritize business-critical traffic to ensure the safest, most efficient connectivity – at all times and under all conditions.

If you’d like to learn more, you’re invited to join our webinar about Ensuring Business Continuity on October 26, 2021. Some of our experts will be on hand, with some specific examples of how Allot can help CSPs secure their SMB customers.