By David Uberti and Steven Rosenbush
The Christmas Day bombing in Nashville hit a weak point in
telecommunications infrastructure, disrupting phone and internet
service for days and underscoring a key risk for increasingly
digitized businesses.
A recreational vehicle exploded in front of an AT&T Inc.
switching station, knocking out a central node that directs data
from users and businesses across telecom systems. The incident,
information technology experts and executives say, highlights how a
terrorist attack, natural disaster or cyber incident can do
widespread economic damage should it hit such a location.
"The way the networks are developed across the U.S. leads them
to be susceptible to this type of event," said Nick Enger, chief
technology officer of Advanced Technology Consulting Inc., an IT
advisory firm.
Telecom networks in particular cities or regions converge at
these so-called central offices. While AT&T said Monday that it
restored most service in Nashville, the incident illustrates how a
problem at one of these physical locations can send ripple effects
across an entire region's digital infrastructure. Law-enforcement
officials have considered whether the AT&T facility was
targeted in the attack.
"This event creates an opportunity for all of us to review our
backup and resiliency planning not only for our technology and
non-office facilities, but also to identify and assess the physical
and technological resilience of our critical partners," Edward
Wagoner, chief information officer, digital, at commercial
real-estate service firm Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., said in an email.
The company has a presence in Nashville, but Mr. Wagoner said he
couldn't discuss specific clients.
AT&T customers in states beyond Tennessee, including
Kentucky and Alabama, suffered disruptions to service in recent
days. The Kentucky Department of Education reported internet
trouble at many of its facilities until Monday morning, and
Tennessee state officials said in a statement that outages
disrupted services such as the state's child abuse hotline and
online Medicaid portal.
The issues also forced some planes to reroute their approaches
to or takeoffs from Nashville International Airport, causing
delays.
"All of us in town are struck by the extent to which this attack
affected so many things across the region," Tom Jurkovich, vice
president of strategic communications and external affairs for the
Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority, said in an interview.
Hundreds of AT&T workers and first responders have worked to
get the downtown Nashville facility up and running, putting out
fires, running the facility on generator power and pumping 3 feet
of water out of the building's basement, the company said.
The company added Monday morning that 11 portable cell sites
continued running throughout the region and "nearly all home
internet and video customers have been restored."
The bombing underscores the need for businesses to build
redundancies into their networks, allowing one service to take over
if another goes down, IT experts say.
"There may be different levels of disruption that businesses
face, as witnessed by the shift to remote work due to the pandemic,
disruptions caused by natural disasters or this latest event in
Nashville," said Vineet Jain, chief executive of Egnyte Inc., of
Mountain View, Calif., which provides online file synchronization,
sharing and other services. Egnyte uses multiple internet service
providers that are designed to take over for one another in the
event of an outage, he said. The use of multiple tech vendors at
various levels minimizes risk, he said.
Mr. Enger, whose firm advises businesses on IT resilience, said
dozens of clients from Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana and Alabama
lost their primary connection following the Nashville bombing.
While lining up contingency plans requires upfront investment,
Mr. Enger added, "If you don't have a plan in place [during an
incident], it's too late at that point."
Over time, networks should become more secure as software
replaces physical infrastructure, said Dan Bieler, principal
analyst for innovation, future of work and digital strategy at
Forrester Research.
The shift to so-called software-defined networking has been
under way for years but is only about one-third complete, he said.
Such systems can route data across networks in a more efficient way
and might be more resilient to disruptions.
The timetable for these innovations is difficult to forecast,
and deployment varies from carrier to carrier as older
infrastructure ages out, Mr. Bieler said.
"Companies don't want to rip out equipment that they invested in
if it is still doing its job," he said. "It is a gradual
process."
--Angus Loten contributed to this article.
Write to David Uberti at david.uberti@wsj.com and Steven
Rosenbush at steven.rosenbush@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 28, 2020 17:48 ET (22:48 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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