The Cruel World of Paper

Some airlines have blamed recent service disruptions on power cuts. In contrast, recent disruptions to service at BA have been blamed on a system upgrade in the check-in department. Among other things, it appears that BA staff could not access their computers to see which passengers had gone through security.

BA check-in system checks out: Staff flung back to cruel '90s world of paper https://t.co/5WPKXSRZao

— The Register (@TheRegister) September 6, 2016

The cruel world of paper remains a constant threat in some sectors, particularly healthcare. In the same week of February 2017, those afflicted included a hospital in Melbourne and a hospital trust in Tyneside. Healthcare also seems particularly vulnerable to virus and ransomware attacks.

In contrast, when media giant WPP was hit by a ransomware attack in June 2017, although some creatives turned to "good old-fashioned pen and paper", it seems that other departments simply went out, bought some Macs, and went to work in local coffee shops. Oh, cruel world.

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Related posts

Single Point of Failure (Airlines) (August 2016)



Chris Baraniuk, BA apologises for check-in delays at Heathrow and Gatwick (BBC News,18 July 2016)

Kate Gibbons, Cyberattack sent marketing giant back to pen and paper (Times, 7 December 2017) (paywall)

Jeremy Lee, Safety first: Lessons from the cyberattack on WPP (Campaign, 7 July 2017)

Kate McDonald, EMR crash causes Austin Health to revert to paper temporarily (Pulse+IT, 17 February 2017)

Laura Stevens, Failure of core network at Northumbria downs IT systems (Digital Health, 23 February 2017)

Evan Sweeney, Buffalo hospital returns to pen and paper after a virus shuts down IT systems (12 April 2017)

British Airways passengers delayed by computer glitch (BBC News, 6 September 2016)

Who was hit by the Cyber attack? (BBC News, 13 May 2017)




Post updated and extended 28 December 2017