The exact cause of the major outage at Rogers which turned the Canadian digital network upside down was still unknown on Saturday, a flagrant lack of transparency denounced by experts.
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“They represent 25% of internet traffic in Canada, and 24 hours later, we are not able to say why these systems were offline, deplores Luc Lefebvre, co-founder of Crypto.Québec, an organization specializing in computer security. . It’s a communication disaster. »
By Saturday morning, Rogers reported that the connection was restored for the vast majority of its subscribers.
Services such as Interac and ArrivCan had been paralyzed for almost 24 hours.
And as reported by Le Journal on Saturday, this upheaval forced businesses, in this case a Tim Hortons in Montreal at least, to offer products and services for free since consumers were unable to pay with their debit card.
Photo Nora T. Lamontagne
Central Market Tim Hortons manager Inderpal Singh (left) and his employee Jasmandeep Singh donated several products, being unable to offer debit payment.
A cyberattack?
The exact cause of the failure remained unknown on Saturday.
“The best experts are investigating. I think at this time it is prudent not to [exclure la possibilité d’une cyberattaque] explained the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne.
One of the main theories circulating is that the system that mediates between platforms, such as the corporate server and Interac, has been affected. At least that is Luc Lefebvre’s analysis.
“Currently, in large companies, there are not many people where there are experts to manage these protocols […]. And sometimes, someone makes updates that can cause catastrophic errors,” he says.
Whatever the origin of the problem, the big players in the telecommunications sector must be more proactive in such situations, believe the experts consulted.
Zero crisis management
“We call it crisis management. We must develop scenarios B and C, in case our regular plan does not work, ”says Bruno Guglielminetti, specialist in digital communications.
This chaos can even raise considerable security issues.
“There are people for whom it can be dangerous, problematic situations. When it’s systems like 911 […]we can ask ourselves questions”, adds the expert.
Rogers, which has 11.2 million wireless subscribers, did not respond to our interview request.
Archival photo
Rogers Chairman Tony Staffieri said he was sorry Friday.
“Today we fell short,” Chairman Tony Staffieri wrote on Friday.
– With QMI Agency