Brussels, 29/08/2013 (Agence Europe) - The European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) published a report on 20 August, providing an overview of the major internet network outage incidents in the EU in 2012. The report reveals that out of the 79 error reports, almost 40% of the incidents concerned the European emergency number 112. Furthermore, the majority of incidents affected mobile telephony and mobile internet access. “The EU collaboration behind this report is key to improving the security and resilience of electronic communications networks in the EU, as well as for security in other critical sectors”, said ENISA's executive director, Udo Helmbrecht.
The report presents a complete analysis of the 79 incidents of severe outages of networks and communication services reported by the national authorities. The key conclusions are:
18 EU member states reported incidents, and nine member states did not report any;
50% of incidents affected mobile telephony or mobile internet access;
incidents caused by network overload and those caused by power failures are the two forms of incident to have most affected the networks in terms of the length of disruption to affected users;
for most incidents, as well as for the four services (fixed and mobile telephony, and fixed and mobile internet), the root cause was “system failures” (in 75% of cases);
incidents due to external causes, especially power supply failures, affected around 2.8 million users and incidents due to network overload, 9.4 million users. Incidents caused by natural phenomena (such as heavy snowfall) affected networks the longest - on average around 36 hours. (IL/transl.fl)