Tech giant hit by unprecedented service disruptions
The country's tech giant, Kakao Corp., suffered service disruptions due to a fire at a data center Saturday. The incident shows how vulnerable our wired digital society is to such a malfunction.
The fire broke out at around 3:33 p.m. at SK C&C's Pangyo building in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, which houses Kakao's data center. The building's power supply was cut off, causing a disruption for the country's dominant mobile messenger app KakaoTalk.
The malfunctions on the KakaoTalk app included a message delivery failure and log-in error. Its affiliated firm Kakao Pay reported glitches in its online payment service and its gaming platform Kakao Games showed another problem. The fire-induced power cut in the data center also triggered service errors to Daum, Kakao's portal service arm. Additionally, Naver, the country's top internet portal, reported a partial disruption of its online shopping service.
Those developments have caused chaos for users. They remind Koreans of a large-scale disruption of the wired and wireless communication networks of KT, one of the nation's leading telecom operators, which took place a year ago due to a "routing error." KT also brought about a similar internet blackout because of a fire at its underground network center in Ahyeon-dong, Seoul, in November 2018.
It is unprecedented for all of Kakao's internet servers ― their total number estimated at 32,000 ― to come to a halt all at once. Such an incident was dumbfounding. Yet the question is whether Kakao was prepared. The IT behemoth has a crisis management manual which calls for repair and recovery of any failed system within 20 minutes.
But the manual has not worked at all. Only one-third of the Kakao servers had been restored by the next morning, with the company suffering its worst and longest service disruption in its 12-year history. It seems that the company's backup system has failed to cope with the data center power stoppage although Kakao has several other data centers around the country to be activated in emergency. Company management should find out what is wrong with the system and do all it can to prevent future disruptions.
The service disruptions cannot and should not be tolerated. Providers of free-of-charge services are not liable for such disruptions. However, Kakao should be held accountable for any damage arising from the glitches. It must invest more in ensuring the provision of flawless services as well as protecting user security, instead of going all out to maximize its profits by taking advantage of user data and expanding its business recklessly.
Telecommunication policymakers and regulators are not exempt from culpability, either. They cannot avoid the blame for neglecting to oversee online services providers. President Yoon Suk-yeol instructed officials to work closely with Kakao to resume their services quickly and fully. On his orders, Science and ICT Minister Lee Jong-ho formed a telecommunications disaster headquarters to deal with the case.
Most of all, the authorities should pinpoint the exact cause of the incident. Then they must strengthen rules to prevent further service disruptions. Kakao, for its part, need to restore consumer confidence by making its service networks more reliable and secure.
The country's tech giant, Kakao Corp., suffered service disruptions due to a fire at a data center Saturday. The incident shows how vulnerable our wired digital society is to such a malfunction.
The fire broke out at around 3:33 p.m. at SK C&C's Pangyo building in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, which houses Kakao's data center. The building's power supply was cut off, causing a disruption for the country's dominant mobile messenger app KakaoTalk.
The malfunctions on the KakaoTalk app included a message delivery failure and log-in error. Its affiliated firm Kakao Pay reported glitches in its online payment service and its gaming platform Kakao Games showed another problem. The fire-induced power cut in the data center also triggered service errors to Daum, Kakao's portal service arm. Additionally, Naver, the country's top internet portal, reported a partial disruption of its online shopping service.
Those developments have caused chaos for users. They remind Koreans of a large-scale disruption of the wired and wireless communication networks of KT, one of the nation's leading telecom operators, which took place a year ago due to a "routing error." KT also brought about a similar internet blackout because of a fire at its underground network center in Ahyeon-dong, Seoul, in November 2018.
It is unprecedented for all of Kakao's internet servers ― their total number estimated at 32,000 ― to come to a halt all at once. Such an incident was dumbfounding. Yet the question is whether Kakao was prepared. The IT behemoth has a crisis management manual which calls for repair and recovery of any failed system within 20 minutes.
But the manual has not worked at all. Only one-third of the Kakao servers had been restored by the next morning, with the company suffering its worst and longest service disruption in its 12-year history. It seems that the company's backup system has failed to cope with the data center power stoppage although Kakao has several other data centers around the country to be activated in emergency. Company management should find out what is wrong with the system and do all it can to prevent future disruptions.
The service disruptions cannot and should not be tolerated. Providers of free-of-charge services are not liable for such disruptions. However, Kakao should be held accountable for any damage arising from the glitches. It must invest more in ensuring the provision of flawless services as well as protecting user security, instead of going all out to maximize its profits by taking advantage of user data and expanding its business recklessly.
Telecommunication policymakers and regulators are not exempt from culpability, either. They cannot avoid the blame for neglecting to oversee online services providers. President Yoon Suk-yeol instructed officials to work closely with Kakao to resume their services quickly and fully. On his orders, Science and ICT Minister Lee Jong-ho formed a telecommunications disaster headquarters to deal with the case.
Most of all, the authorities should pinpoint the exact cause of the incident. Then they must strengthen rules to prevent further service disruptions. Kakao, for its part, need to restore consumer confidence by making its service networks more reliable and secure.
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