The Venezuelan president reportedly stated that the system of a large hydroelectric power plant in Bolivar state was “hacked” twice, but this is not the first time Venezuela has experienced a massive power outage. The Venezuelan national grid trunk line was attacked in early May of this year, causing a massive power outage across the country. Venezuela experienced its worst power outage in history in March 2019, with 20 of its 23 states without power. And this time, the 765 trunk lines of Venezuela’s national grid were attacked, resulting in power outages in 11 state capitals across the country, except for the capital Caracas.
There is no doubt that the country’s electricity system has become the target of the latest round of “cyber attacks” in the geopolitical context of Venezuela. On the one hand, many countries, including Venezuela, have outdated infrastructure systems such as water and electricity, while on the other hand, hackers are constantly exploiting security flaws in the electricity system to develop malicious software that is more suitable for attacking the electricity system.
The term disaster recovery was coined in the 1970s in the United States, when SunGard, well-known software and IT services company, built the world’s first disaster recovery center. “Within four hours of any computer incident, our backups can have your service online and run smoothly for 210 days,” the chairman of this company famously stated. Despite the appearance of the first crabs, the development of disaster recovery systems was slow, and its rapid development came with the “911 terrorist attacks” in the United States.
The 911 terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 Americans, did not go well for companies in the World Trade Center. Almost all of the World Trade Center’s small and medium-sized businesses failed. After its data center was destroyed and communication lines were disrupted due to a lack of disaster preparedness systems and robust emergency response measures, the Bank of New York was forced to go into liquidation months later. Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley, on the other hand, had well-developed disaster recovery systems and were able to resume full operations in a very short period.
Following the disaster, Deutsche Bank mobilized over 4,000 employees and the resources of its global branches to quickly restore operations. Morgan Stanley’s office on the World Trade Center’s 25th floor was destroyed, but a second office was established in the disaster recovery center within half an hour, and operations were fully restored the following day.
Network attacks, hardware damage, system failure, and internal staff deletion incidents have become common since the advent of the information age, and natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes can cause data centers to go down or even lose data. Disaster preparedness has evolved into a technical indicator of a company’s level of risk aversion. Nowadays, all sizes of Internet companies have their disaster recovery systems or disaster recovery solutions.
Disaster recovery systems are classified into three levels.
Disaster recovery at the data-level
Data-level disaster recovery focuses on data and how to keep it safe in the event of a disaster. Data-level disaster recovery was once accomplished by trucking hard drives. Nowadays, it is primarily accomplished by synchronizing data between data centers using high-capacity fiber optic data.
Disaster recovery at the application level
Application-level disaster recovery focuses on whether the application can be continued, and a complete set of support systems is typically backed up in an off-site disaster recovery center to ensure that the production center can be switched immediately in the event of a problem in the main production center, thereby reducing system downtime.
Disaster recovery at the businesses level
Business-level disaster recovery is widely regarded as the most advanced level of disaster recovery solution, as it not only backs up all code but also includes offline regulations and personnel composition.
