Planes, trains and third-party risks — a tale of two IT-related shutdowns – Computerworld

“It took us a while before we could trace it to a firewall issue. It was not one of the obvious causes to look at,” Strachan Stine Smemo, the Bane external communications manager, said in an email to Computerworld. “It was tricky to find the problem.”

Bane’s team opted against changing any firewall settings and instead — as a temporary measure — switched communications to a different firewall. (They later changed the impacted components, Smemo said.)

Arild Nybrodahl, Bane’s information and communications technology director, said his team detected “system instability” on Christmas Eve, which is when “troubleshooting efforts were initiated.” Things didn’t get bad enough to shutdown operations until 8 a.m. the next day, he said.