While the whole CrowdStrike thing was pretty funny in many ways, it really flags up how woefully unprepared we are for any kind of global IT outage.
An outage can disrupt your life and business in an instant. There’s not much you can do when your flight gets cancelled or the pharmacist can’t process your prescription but these are the measures I take for myself to at least be a bit prepared:
Backup Everything
Regularly back up your data to physical storage. The cloud, for all its convenience, won’t save you in an outage.
Offline Access
Keep offline copies of critical information. For the REALLY important stuff, print out a copy. Archaic, I know, but it could save your ass one day.
Disable Auto Updates
Auto updates can introduce new bugs or compatibility issues at the worst times. Manually update your software after ensuring any bugs have had time to be ironed out.
Keep Cash Handy
In a global outage, electronic payment systems can go down. Having cash ensures you can still make necessary purchases.
Stop Fucking Syncing Everything
If the cloud goes down, you’re fucked (yes I have a special mistrust of the cloud in general – we rely on it far too much).
Emergency Plans
Have a clear, actionable plan for your business and personal tech needs. Know what to do when systems go down. For me, that plan is to head to X and check the memes.