Commentary: What would happen if the internet went down?

WHAT AN INTERNET OUTAGE WOULD REALLY LOOK LIKE

A complete internet blackout is highly unlikely, given its underlying infrastructure.

Interruptions to specific services, on the other hand, are both plausible and likely to continue to increase. If there was a cyber attack on healthcare systems, for example, a clinic might continue consultations but healthcare claims might be delayed.

A transport or banking app might be unavailable due to security risks, while trains could still run and card payments continue to work, assuming these services were not affected, as well.

Patching or recovery from cyber incidents can range from routine repairs to systems or equipment, to investigating compromised systems, which may involve complex digital forensic work.

The reach of an outage depends on which shared systems fail and whether alternatives are available. The examples below show how widely some digital services and technologies are used, and how a failure could affect our lives.

PREPARING BEFORE SOMETHING GOES WRONG

All this shows that the better we plan for interruptions to online services, the more resilient we can be.

For organisations and businesses, that means having a well-prepared and tested incident response plan. This plan would include clear criteria for when a system must be isolated or a service taken offline, alongside arrangements for maintaining essential operations, and a recovery plan.

The key is preparation, so that any service outage follows a pre-planned response rather than having to act in the moment. This can reduce the risk of a single vulnerability turning into a disaster.