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Last week’s faulty software update, that affected many Microsoft servers worldwide, serves as a big wake up call to the fragility of “the cloud.”
Had I told you that millions of people across the globe would lose access to email and that Delta Airlines would be brought to its knees – losing many years of goodwill with its flyers, you would likely guess cyberterrorism. Nope, it was a faulty software update.
It is infuriating that these businesses, that rely so much on computers, did not have any redundancy measures in place to prevent such an occurrence. We are human and things sometimes happen…so why not bake that into your systems? Imagine if this was actually a cyber attack!
Controlling the Controllable
Of course we can’t control what businesses do (or neglect to do). But we can control how prepared we are. In financial planning, we often talk about the virtue of having emergency savings. These include savings accounts, CD’s, and other cash-like alternatives that we can access quickly if needed.
After last week’s computer disaster, I think it is just as wise (and important) to have an emergency cash stash. What I mean is to have several twenty dollar bills and maybe a few hundreds stashed away somewhere at home.
Physical Cash in an Emergency
What happens if our ability to transact electronically were taken offline for a week or more? Grocery stores and gas stations may have the goods we want/need, but if they are unable to process credit/debit card transactions, we could be stuck. Unless we had cash.
A simple thing we can do that has the potential to benefit us handsomely were something like this to happen. Indeed, people may pay more than $20 (in form of an IOU) in order to get their hands on a real $20 bill.
Related: Talking Risk With Clients