One year ago today, industries and services across the globe were brought to a standstill by a single misstep. A faulty automated security update. While cybersecurity professionals were no strangers to the risks of system-level updates. The scale and severity of this global IT outage made the consequences vividly real for the general public. From grounded flights and frozen financial systems to cancelled hospital procedures. The disruption touched virtually every sector – and millions of lives.
Twelve months later, the question remains: Have businesses learned from the experience? Ongoing IT outages at major banks and service providers suggest many have not. But experts say the answers are clear – if businesses are willing to act on them.
Eileen Haggerty, Area Vice President, Product & Solutions at NETSCOUT, shares key lessons from the 2024 outage and how organisations can better protect themselves in an increasingly digital world:
“If nothing else, businesses must ensure they have full visibility across their IT infrastructure to pre-empt issues triggered by software updates,” Haggerty states. “This means always-on, end-to-end monitoring – not just of the network, but the entire IT environment.”
Such visibility enables teams to detect anomalies before they spiral into costly downtime. It helps avoid both financial losses and reputational damage.
But monitoring alone isn’t enough. Proactive, predictive strategies are now essential:
“Securing a network isn’t just about defences, it’s about foresight. Synthetic testing that simulates real traffic can uncover vulnerabilities long before customers notice anything is wrong,” Haggerty explains. “Coupled with real-time traffic monitoring, this gives IT teams the data and confidence to act swiftly during security events or outages.”
When outages occur, organisations shouldn’t dismiss them as unavoidable mishaps—they should turn them into essential components of their future-proofing strategy.
“Incidents like last year’s shouldn’t just be viewed as disruptions – they’re valuable sources of insight,” Haggerty says. “A truly resilient business will use them to build a comprehensive post-mortem, feeding insights back into performance and security strategies.”
By investing in advanced visibility tools, running proactive tests, and treating every incident as a strategic learning opportunity, businesses can move from reactive firefighting to confident, forward-looking operations.
The 2024 global IT outage was a wake-up call. A year later, it’s time to prove we were listening.
