The world is too dependent on a weak computer network

The close connection between computers and the Internet means that the risk of only a small error is enough to sway the stock market or make millions of people live in the absence of electricity and water.

When the grid system, power management of 15 states in the US and a province in Canada had problems because of a small software error, more than 50 million people here have absorbed the misery of having no electricity for the day 14 August 8, 2003.

People cannot access the website if the root domain system is attacked.

Internet traffic is now entrusted to 13 root domain names servers. These systems each day receive about 25 billion commands to domain addresses and are always the target of hackers. On February 6, 2007, three of the 13 servers were attacked to deny the service and stop up to 90% of information passing through those systems in 12 hours.

Or people can hardly imagine a life without Google. The world's most popular search engine owner is responsible for handling about 3.3 billion web searches in the US alone and provides e-mail services for 10 million people. Many of Google's systems had to shut down during the "crisis" of MyDoom virus on July 26, 2004.

The largest e-mail service provider today is Microsoft. Their MSN / Hotmail system attracted 193 million users. Yahoo followed closely behind with 171 million e-mail accounts.

Meanwhile, the world's largest payment network operator, First Data (USA), handled more than 30 million transactions via global credit cards last year and connected about 2 million ATM systems. First Data is also responsible for managing 629 million accounts worldwide.

If these statistics are not enough to make people believe that the world is too dependent on the information stored in computers, they may consider a recent study by IDC: total digital data created in 2006 was 161 billion GB, 3 million times more than the amount of information in published books since humanity appeared. IDC predicts that by 2010, that number will increase 6 times, equivalent to 899 exabytes or nearly 1 zettabyte.