We were staggered to see an article in the Telegraph News by their Defence Correspondents raising alarm about the fact that this new ship was running Microsoft XP and thus would be at risk from Cyber Attacks. These two people are meant to be knowledgeable about Defence matters for goodness sake do they seriously think that a ship would be exposing internal networked XP systems to the Internet?
So Rating Jack Tar would be allowed to look at dodgy porn sites in North Korea – show some common sense! The two Carriers may be large but they would still wish to employ some stealth in their movements.
A parallel with the NHS hacking was suggested but last time I looked hospitals tended not to be sneaking about!
Even more concerning was the comment of a professor of computing who questioned “Why would you put an obsolete system in a new vessel that has a lifetime of decades?”
Because it works (is proven) as part of the protected network within the vessel in conjunction with the many systems that will be on board perhaps?
Presumably the good professor never puts his debit card in an ATM on the basis that it employs the XP OS, as many do reliably and safely?
These attitudes show a dangerous lack of realism whilst proclaiming to be in touch with computing. They are the reason that there are still many who believe that as soon as an existing piece of software that interacts with many other areas is released in a new version then every user to whom it applies should be upgraded immediately. Fine perhaps in a sensibly implemented way for security software like AVG but not for Operating Systems where systems are integrated.
Drawing a parallel with the NHS is relevant in that there have been examples of new systems being launched and failing abysmally and expensively.
A good business principle is if it works do not fix it.
How many an IT Director has sat in a meeting and cringed when the CEO, or some other non-IT skilled Director, extols this marvellous system that he or she was exposed to whilst visiting a competitor: “Oh the sales dashboard is marvellous and do you know customers are given a tracking number when their order is shipped so that they can track the delivery by logging in online,” the evangelist proclaims.
What the evangelist does not realise is that they are only scratching the surface of the business needs. What was perhaps not seen was that the Logistics Director of the competitor is tearing his hair out because the new system does not match his proven warehouse processes and so he has to pay overtime now to keep up.
Also perhaps not seen is the fact that the customers used to like getting regular emails or text messages without having to log in telling them precisely the status of their order. Sexy gizmos in a few areas do not mean a system is suitable for the whole organisation.
We repeat again that no system is best of breed for every area of the organisation. The optimum solution if there is a case of needing to improve the computerisation in one or a few areas of the business is to see what can be achieved to integrate the desired new application(s) to the existing proven applications in other areas.
In short keep the system modules that work well and fit the business and get the new software to talk to them thus causing the minimum disruption to the day to day operations that are running smoothly and let the new software just attempt to improve the areas that were deficient.
Do not despair if the provider of the new software cannot integrate to the existing working systems that are to remain just come and talk to us as we have done this many many times for software that is not ours.
Finally, if you are being persuaded to upgrade Operating Systems, do a proper job of weighing up the advantages and drawbacks and put together a sensible phased plan to test and implement the upgrades. Part of that process should be to talk to peers in other organisations who have already carried out such an operation and patiently listen to the issues that they discovered.
God bless HMS Queen Elizabeth and all who sail in her.