Three social media giants, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp on Monday October 4, 2021 experienced a global shutdown with many users unable to access their accounts for six hours.
Millions of users of the app said they were experiencing error messages and glitches on the platforms. This had many users in panic mode with concerns over whether their information, data and security were at risk.
Acting Principal Consultant at the e-Crime Bureau, Philemon Hini taking his turn on GhanaWeb TV’s BizTech segment explained the outages were as a result of a configuration error.
He pointed that during a planned network maintenance, “a command was issued with the intention to assess the availability of the global backbone capacity, which unintentionally took down all the connections on its backbone network, effectively disconnecting data centers globally.”
Touching on the security and safety of data and user information on apps, Philemon Hini said the onus lies on individuals and businesses to adhere to best practices.
The e-Crime Bureau provides cybersecurity-related services and solutions to private, public sector and international organisations. It is the first cyber security and digital forensics agency with a state-of-the-art e-Crime Lab to be established and fully operate in West Africa.
