[Gllug] IT disaster in British public authority caused by operator

[Sharon Kimble]

IT disaster in British public authority caused by operator

The US IT service provider EDS has admitted that one of its employees was 
responsible for the crash of thousands of computers in Britain's Department 
for Work and Pensions (DWP) two weeks ago. Due to an error committed by the 
EDS operator, an XP update that was only supposed to be installed on a few 
computers was spread throughout the network.

As a result of the unintended update, 40,000 PCs running on Windows 2000 did 
not have any connection to the central processing systems that the DWP uses 
to process payments of pensions and social services for several days. EDS 
stated that the malfunction did not affect any core areas. The company 
promised to have experienced employees monitor the installation of future 
software updates. 

Source - Heise Online News 8/12/04 - 
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/54044
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