Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - The traffic mess at the U.S.-Canada border this week is putting a spotlight on our reliance on computer systems everywhere.
The extreme traffic delays have been caused by a computer system outage at the Canadian border, forcing commercial traffic to find a place to wait.
"To the best of our knowledge, this wasn't really an attack, but it might as well have been," said cybersecurity expert Arun Vishwanath. "The outcomes are all the same."
Vishwanath says the aftermath of the system outage sheds light on an often overlooked aspect of Cybersecurity: How do you react when the computer stops working.
"It includes preparing everybody to understand what that impact is going to be downstream," Vishwanath said. "Not just the paperwork in creating efficiency in the process that went down, but going downstream and focusing on the traffic that's going to start building up. It's the downstream supply chain issue.
"It requires a very focused effort where you do these kind of audits on a quarterly basis... which we've started to not do as often anymore because we've started to believe that these systems are not going to fail."
There is still no official word on what caused the outage from the Canada Border Services Agency.
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