Never has the adage warning against putting all your eggs in one basket come true with such an impact. We are seeing Murphy’s Law operating with a vengeance. If anything could go wrong it will go wrong at the most critical moment. Now things have gone wrong on a massive scale.

Crashing of Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 supported apps have caused widespread disruptions worldwide with the outage affecting all sectors of industry. The economic costs are going to be staggering.

Crowdstrike a cyber security firm and vendor for Microsoft updates defective content on Microsoft Azure and brings the system crashing. The CEO of CrowdStrike glibly says that the defect is fixed and deployed. Both he and Microsoft have to explain the following:

How was a defect allowed to slip in without being detected at the quality testing or while being deployed?

Is the security of Microsoft Azure so weak that it permits defects to be uploaded without being detected?

Why was there no back-up or stand-by arrangement to kick off when the system crashed? If there was an alternate arrangement then it has not worked.

Why was there no isolating mechanism to prevent a domino effect on the different systems linked?

Who will take responsibility for the loss of data, monetary loss, loss of man hours, and possible deaths due to the downtime?

Surprisingly, CERT-In has not yet come out with any statement since the crash occurred on Thursday evening.

Govt of India has to explain why our own indigenous OS BOSS has not been deployed or encouraged to date.

Artificial intelligence is now being promoted as the panacea for all problems. Has any risk analysis been done on it? Indications point out several potential disruptive possibilities with AI which will eventually threaten the survival of the human race. Are we ready for it?

Innovation for the sake of innovation and technology for the sake of technology being implemented mindlessly will spell ruin. This is a wake-up call not only for our government but for the entire humanity.