As millions of users, outsourced call centers and other businesses are impacted by the cutting of several undersea Internet cables, experts look for solutions. Five undersea Internet cables have been damaged, causing Internet outages for approximately 83 million users in Asia and the Middle East as well as disrupting voice calls, corporate data and video trafffic, according to Khaleej Times online. MORE ON Internet Disruption Third Internet Cable Breaks; IT Groups on Alert Internet in India Slowed by Middle East Outage Web Traffic Disruption Raises Internet Infrastructure Vulnerability Concerns “The Internet is designed to route around damage such as this, but if enough cables are disabled the options shrink,” Bruce Schneier, CTO, BT Counterpane. “Any critical systems that rely on Internet connectivity are gong to be affected.” Speculations about the cause of the damage have included ships dropping anchor and dragging cables until they snap, but officially, no cause has been named by the companies involved. The International Cable Protection Committee, an association of 86 submarine cable operators dedicated to safeguarding undersea cables, told Reuters that investigations were underway and it wouldn’t speculate on the cause of the damage.“This has been an eye-opener for us, and everyone in the telecom industry worldwide,” Colonel R.S. Parihar, the secretary of the Internet Service Providers Association of India, told the International Herald Tribune. “…what if it is [caused by] sabotage tomorrow?” And, he pointed out, no governments or armies protect these cables. Experts say sabotage is unlikely, but five separate incidents within 10 days do raise questions.Outages Where?The map below shows the locations and details of the five Internet outages. Sabotage or Redundancy?“‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action,'” said an anonymous source at a large telecom provider quoting James Bond bad guy Goldfinger. The source added, “That said, cables are fragile and they go out all the time. That is why we have redundancy—the fact that we had some that got noticed may simply be calling attention to the background outages, ones that would have been beneath our notice had we not lost two serving the same traffic.”But one has to wonder, where is the redundancy? And how exactly are these things happening? As Schneier points out in his blog, “A fifth [cable] cut? What the hell is going on out there?” Related content opinion Website spoofing: risks, threats, and mitigation strategies for CIOs In this article, we take a look at how CIOs can tackle website spoofing attacks and the best ways to prevent them. By Yash Mehta Dec 01, 2023 5 mins CIO Cyberattacks Security brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security feature LexisNexis rises to the generative AI challenge With generative AI, the legal information services giant faces its most formidable disruptor yet. That’s why CTO Jeff Reihl is embracing and enhancing the technology swiftly to keep in front of the competition. By Paula Rooney Dec 01, 2023 6 mins Generative AI Digital Transformation Cloud Computing Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe