Earlier this month, McDonald's experienced a system-wide technical outage in several of its global markets, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan and Hong Kong. The company clarified that the IT outage was not due to a cybersecurity threat, but it took the better part of a day to fix it and bring mobile ordering and kiosks back online.
Then, a few weeks later, on March 24, Panera Bread also suffered a “major technology outage” that affected its online ordering, point-of-sale systems, and in-store kiosks, as first reported by Silicon Valley Daily. gave. McDonald's mentioned the cause, and Reddit users in the Panera community speculated that it was some kind of cyber attack. By Monday, restaurants remained open with systems down, according to Restaurant Business. His IT team at Panera assured users on his website: “The oven is warm, the bread is baking, and our team is ready to serve you at Bakery Cafe,” the app states that the system is undergoing “important system maintenance and enhancements.” I did.
While few details have been released about the McDonald's and Panera outages, the reality is that widespread IT outages can affect businesses of all sizes, and restaurants should avoid these issues (as much as possible). ) we need to dedicate resources to preventing it in the first place. .
“In today's digitally driven world, restaurants rely heavily on technology to streamline operations and improve the customer experience,” said Carissa De Santis, Chief Technology Officer, BRIX Holdings. Masu. “Recent news stories about high-profile outages at large companies like McDonald’s and Panera remind us all of the fragility of our digital systems. These incidents only disrupt normal business operations. This could lead to brand reputation damage and significant financial loss.”
Most restaurant technology stacks these days are more complex than they used to be, De Santis says, so IT teams need regularly defined service level agreements to easily track potential system issues. and suggested that vendors with performance monitoring should be carefully selected.
Other safety measures include investing in redundancy measures and backup systems. Backup systems intentionally duplicate certain system components to ensure a backup in case one system goes down. De Santis also suggests implementing his failover mechanism, where a server switches to a backup in case of a failure or outage. It's also important to continually test protocols to determine how much load the system can tolerate before problems occur, he added.
Savneet Singh, CEO of PAR Technology, said that even if the cause of Panera's problems is indeed the cause, staff can be made aware of the threat and avoid falling prey to phishing attacks and other cybersecurity pitfalls. added that ongoing cybersecurity training for personnel outside of the IT team is critical. cyber attack.
“Preventing IT outages is not just the technical team's responsibility, it's everyone's job,” says Singh. “Leaders need to build this understanding into their culture so that everyone is committed to a secure environment and working in tandem with IT. Additionally, IT teams must work to streamline vendors and become more consistent. By building a resilient platform, we believe we can reduce vendors and limit entry points for bad actors. By making cybersecurity a priority practice across the organization, restaurants can reduce IT disruption. The chances of this happening can be significantly reduced.”
Contact Joanna: [email protected]meter
