The Internet Tsunami

Almost every last week of the year, we normally look forward to spend time with family members while we try to finish off our remaining annual leave for the year as much as possible. Unfortunately, the last week of every year is the most challenging week for an Internet company like us. Knowing that most service providers are operating with a skeleton of staff during this period, the hackers normally take the opportunity to crack any weak system they can find. After all, they have all the time in the world to do it amidst their year-end break.

This year, like adding salts to the wound, we experienced unexpected additional and bigger challenges due to the breakdown of sub-marine cable systems that carry most of the Internet and telecommunications traffic between the South East Asia region and the rest of the world. It was due to a major earthquake in Taiwan, which coincidently happened on the second anniversary date of the never-to-forget tsunami that killed hundreds of thousand of people.