In the wee hours of Friday morning, political reporter Steve Clemons locked himself out of his room at the Aspen Meadows Resort. When he went to the front desk to get another key, he discovered that the resort’s computer system was down and he couldn’t get a new one — a staff member had to help him into his room with a master key.
At 10:25 a.m., Clemons sat down to moderate a panel on “cyber, fraud and emerging threats” at the Aspen Security Forum. At that point, news agencies had reported a massive IT outage that grounded flights and swamped computer systems in hospitals, governments and businesses around the world, including the Aspen Meadows Resort. The outage illustrated cyber technology’s universal and fundamental role in our daily lives, the panelists mused, and underscored massive vulnerabilities in modern society.
“All over the world, this had an impact,” Clemons said to panelists, “So are we now in a high-fear connected world rather than a high-trust connected world?”
Panelist Anne Neuberger, deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, took the question.
“We’re in a world where we have to work much more rapidly so that individuals can have confidence in the digital systems underpinning our lives,” Neuberger said.
The outage hit Aspen businesses and infrastructure just like everywhere else. The outage caused up to three-hour delays for six inbound and six outbound flights at the Aspen airport as of noon Friday, according to Bill Tomcich, a Roaring Fork Valley-based aviation consultant. Tomcich said there had been no cancellations. Denver International Airport canceled 58 flights and delayed 251, a combined 45% of the airport’s schedule.
Local businesses struggled to adapt after their systems crashed. Reached around 11 a.m. Friday, an exasperated employee at Starbucks in Willits told the Aspen Daily News that their computer system was out.
“It’s affecting us pretty hard,” the employee said. “All our computers are down, it’s crazy.”
When asked for more details, the employee said she was too busy to talk and rushed back to work.
According to global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, Friday’s outage was a technical failure, not an intentional cyberattack. CrowdStrike sent out a faulty software update for computers running Windows operating systems, leaving them useless. The company has apologized and deployed a software fix.
Still, panelists pointed out that the outage demonstrated the potential power for intentional cyberattacks.
“This cyberattack problem … is a $10 trillion problem in terms of the impact it’s having on consumers, users and lost business,” said panelist and Vice-Chair of Mastercard Jon Huntsman Jr.
Sir Jeremy Fleming, former director of the British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters, said Western countries’ attempts to deter cyberattacks are “not working.”
Part of the challenge in deterring a bad actor like a criminal group or nation from hacking and sabotaging critical infrastructure is that the United States and Western countries haven’t worked out the proper response, Fleming argued. Typically, the United States uses cyber responses for cyber attacks, Fleming said, but there are other options.
“The sophistication around thinking on how we push back just isn’t nearly developed enough,” Fleming said.
Neuberger argued that the responses to cyber attacks are a complicated question.
“Consequences in cyberspace are more difficult,” Neuberger said. “If an individual based in Russia conducts cyberattacks against a hospital, what are the appropriate responses and consequences? For the individuals themselves, as well as for the countries that harbor them?”
Neuberger laid out a list of Biden administration programs the White House has launched to safeguard cyber infrastructure.
Panelists agreed that cybersecurity was not an asset the world could afford to neglect.
“The outage last night and the issues we experienced this morning affirm how much digital has become part of daily lives,” said Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs. “You can’t get into your hotel room, millions of people around the world can’t get on their planes. We depend on these tools. We have to treat them with the level of seriousness that that suggests.”
