In a report conducted by state services, Orange is singled out at different levels. Several shortcomings must be corrected and, within six months, tested as part of a crisis exercise.
After the internal investigation at Orange, place the report of the State services on the unprecedented failure of the emergency services (the 15, 17, 18 and 112) for several hours, on June 2. Unveiled on July 22, the nearly forty-page document points to shortcomings and failures in the maintenance of the operator’s infrastructure, but also in its management of the incident.
Led by the National Information Systems Security Agency, with the support of the General Administration Inspectorate, the Defense Electronic Communications Commission, the General Economic Council and the General Inspectorate of social affairs, the report analyzes both the circumstances of the outage and how the operator coped with it.
A crisis exercise in 6 months
But above all, the document is projected in the aftermath, by formulating recommendations, grouped into three main sections. Among the avenues formulated by the State services, under the aegis of the Prime Minister and the Ministry of the Economy and Finance, is the implementation of a stress test to assess the operator in a crisis exercise. , in order to see his level of preparation and his resilience.
These stress tests should also be used to ” test the feasibility of the proposed changes », Notes the report, which observes that during the incident which affected the calls servers, technical platforms which are used to interconnect different call technologies (Voice over IP for Internet telephony or PSTN for the switched telephone network), there had never been such exercises.
Thus, the report points to the fact ” that no crisis exercise simulating a software failure or a computer attack impacting the emergency numbers service has been carried out by Orange or has been organized by the State “. In fact, the reliability of the call servers, and through them of the emergency numbers, was ” partial “And” the incomplete business continuity process “.
These crisis exercises, which will involve both operators and emergency services as well as those of the State, will happen very quickly, starting this year. Commenting on the submission of the report, the Secretary of State in charge of digital, Cédric O, reported on July 22 the will of the government to learn from it and to undertake the actions which are put forward.
This exercise ” will be organized within six months by the State services in association with all the actors concerned Says the government. It is ” verify the improvement of the resilience of the emergency number routing system and crisis management »And, at the same time, any weaknesses that may require additional corrections.
