I woke up this morning thinking about the increasing impact that any disruption between us and the Internet has in our daily personal and professional lives. I love the security profession but sometimes it drives your brain to an offroad or two (or more) that many people do not oft travel.
Think. What use is your smartphone, computer or tablet if it loses all ability to communicate with anyone or anything else?
When fiber is cut and Internet and phone service are down it often affects an entire community or region. If this disruption occurs inline with a disaster, either natural or terror, lives can be at risk.
Fortunately most fiber cuts to date are accidental the result of an errant backhoe or other less than nefarious cause.
This is changing. Intentional cuts in the Bay Area in 2015 and allegations from Verizon that striking workers intentionally cut fiber are troublesome indicators that our fiber optic networks will increasingly be a target for those with a desire to disrupt.
But what is old is new again. The first recorded telecommunication sabotage took place during the second battle of Bull Run in 1862. I would argue the stakes are no higher today just different.
Impact
The business impact of a fiber cut can be measured quantitatively and qualitatively. I dare you to go brick and mortar shopping in a region experiencing a fiber cut. You will quickly learn which retailers have the most resilient and effective disaster recovery and business continuity efforts.
Most retailers rely on fiber for every connection they make at the point of sale or otherwise. The fallback is normally satellite and works much more slowly, if it works at all. And you thought the lady ahead of you in line at Wal-Mart buying 500 cat key chains insisting on 50 separate receipts was slow.
The inability for teenagers to reach their friends via Facebook, Snapchat, SMS, phone or any other means other than face to face may seem in the moment catastrophic but is in reality only a symptom pointing to a future where the stakes are much higher.
Today Alexa’s inability to respond from the mothership to turn off lights and tell dad jokes arguably worse than my own is but a minor annoyance.
Future Alexa controlling my in home medical devices, fire suppression systems, and life safety equipment sets the stage for a future where being always connected is as critical as having water, power and oxygen to breathe.
Solutions
Ensure you have multiple Internet connections over disparate paths. Businesses in mission critical industries do this as a normal course of business. I recommend small businesses and families do as well.
My small business maintains two Internet connections and a satellite backup. Keep in mind fiber cuts often render all land based communication useless. Maintaining satellite Internet as a backup is a relatively cheap insurance policy. We use Exede.
Invest in a SOHO router that manages multiple Internet connections and provides for automatic failover/failback. My preference is CradlePoint.
Invest in an out-of-band communication technology to ensure that fiber cuts or other outages do not prevent you from reaching your family or business associates.
Not fully baked but amongst the most promising and exciting innovation for communications not reliant on Internet or even mobile coverage are these two companies. Beartooth and GoTenna.
Both systems utilize a combination of your smartphone and a built in 900 mhz unlicensed radio frequencies to allow communication over several miles with no dependency other than a similar device on the other end.
Although GoTenna appears more consumer friendly and geared towards the social, crowdsourced model they do purport to have a mission critical “professional” line in the works. I’ve ordered a pair of GoTenna devices and will be posting a review after some time assessing their merits and limitations.
Technology solutions aside the most important action you can take as a business, family or individual is to have a plan and TEST the plan regularly. Many great resources to assist with this over at ready.gov
As always feel free to reach out to me directly via LinkedIn if you would like more information about this topic or any other.