During 2015 the big “attack of the bugs” took place on numerous organizations causing very serious problems on their functions and reputation (read HERE). The following year, 2016, seems to be –at least till today- more quiet.
Here are some noticeable stories though, that became headlines news:
HSBC major outage
On the very first days of 2016, a major IT outage happened at HSBC bank. The online accounts of millions customers weren’t accessible for two days till services returned to normal. A “complex technical issue” on the bank’s internal systems was the reason for all this mess according to Jack Hackett , HSBC’s Chief Operating Officer.
Software bug helps bank robbers
A group of hacker-thieves hijacked the Bangladesh Bank system in mid-March and transferred successfully $81 million in four transactions. However, due to a spelling error that tipped off the bank, another $870 million in transfers was canceled. An error in the system –even though it’s not sure whether it was coincidental or not- caused the interruption in the automated printing of the transactions made. The transfer receipts were discovered after several days allowing the thieves to easily cover their tracks.
Satellite failure causes global disorganizations
A software bug that lasted for 13 microseconds (0.000013 of a second) was enough time to cause large repercussions to global positioning systems this past January. The momentary fail of this 25-year-old satellite, throw off –globally- GPS systems from weather to defense for many hours and other systems like select radio stations for several days till operations were restored.
Pentagon’s F-35 Jet Fighter ‘crashed’
The abject failure of the F-35 fighter jet’s radar became viral on the news as it was the continuation to a series of the plane’s tests disaster during 2015. A pilot left ‘blind’ for some time until the radar recover from the failure. The 8.3 million lines of code -that F-35 includes- were a part of this problem and the added time and monumental budget of over $400 billion didn’t seem to have been a help as well.
No emergency numbers for six hours
Seven US states were left with unavailable emergency services for six hours last April. Eighty-one call centres were affected by the incident, resulting 911 calls that made by 6,000 people being unreachable. Finally it was found that a software error -which could be easily prevented- was responsible for causing the service to drop.
Starbuck's software bug
Back in April, 60% of Starbucks stores in the US and Canada were forced to close because of an internal failure during a routine refresh. The affected stores were unable to process payment transactions. The positive outcome –for customers- was that many stores were giving the coffee away for free.
With the industry being as competitive as it is, ignoring the importance of early and thorough testing is risky business; and you do not want to go down that road. Just consider that discovering a defect in the early testing process, allows you to fix it 80-100 times cheaper and 50 times faster than having to deal with it after it is released into the market.
Take a minute to check Validata Advanced Testing Suite (ATS) for ‘Continuous Testing’ to help you connect testing with development and operations, and automate the design, development, quality assurance and deployment of new applications and systems.
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