AT&T Keeping it Close to Their Chest
AT&T highlighted that the outage that took place on the 22nd of February was not an AT&T cyber-attack.
After the outage that took place, AT&T decided to pay compensation to their customers. The news is not here. The news is what was the reason for the outage? Millions of reasons. What reason were we given? Only one.
Theories or Problems?
Many speculations were made when the outage took place. For example, some thought it was a solar flare or even a potential cyber-attack.
The White House mentioned in a statement that the Federal communication commission, along with the FBI and the department of Homeland Security, held an investigation regarding the outage.
Following the investigation, the company made the following statement: “Based on our initial review, we believe that today’s outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyberattack.”
They added “We are continuing our assessment of today’s outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve.”
Why are governmental officials and AT&T emphasizing the outage was not caused by an AT&T cyber-attack? This could be due to the fact that they wouldn’t want to lose the trust of their customers.
A World Full of Cyberattacks
According to AT&T’s website, the company serves over 100 million customers across the mobile and broadband services. As flawed as it sounds, not disclosing the real reason behind the outage would be beneficial to them, in order not to lose the trust of their customers. This is due to the fact that Verizon and T-Mobile did not experience such outages.
Verizon spokesperson mentioned that “Verizon’s network is operating normally. Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier. We are continuing to monitor the situation.”
Following this statement, T-Mobile mentioned “We did not experience an outage. Our network is operating normally. Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks.”
Cyberattacks these days have yet to become the norm, but many companies are facing them. Stating the real reason behind the outage is a double-edged sword for AT&T, but users are going to go with the flow on what has been mentioned in the media.
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