How pen and paper comes to the rescue in an IT crisis

When the CrowdStrike software bug bricked 8.5 million computers worldwide on 19 July, some of the first people to notice the effects were air travelers.

Anthony Bosman, an academic at Andrews University in Michigan, was trying to board his flight from Michigan to Florida when he realized he couldn’t download a mobile boarding pass to his smartphone.

So he went to check in at the airport, in person and watched in amazement as an airline employee looked up his name on a paper list and then wrote out his boarding pass – by hand.

“It felt like a blast from the past,” he recalls. “The ticket agent, I remember how she commented that her hand was tired from writing so many of them.” His flight took off as planned.

Multiple other passengers, including many in India, reported having the same experience that day.

The CrowdStrike bug also hit banks, telecom firms, health services, and online retailers.

This week, a senior executive at the firm appeared before a US congressional committee and said he was “deeply sorry” for the chaos.

In July, some organizations had to forget about their computer-based processes and do things the old-fashioned way.

If you look through articles about past cyber-attacks and IT failures on the BBC News website, you’ll find countless examples of organizations that have had to “go back to pen and paper” in the face of disruption.

British GPs, staff at foreign exchange firm Travelex, medics at Rouen Hospital in France, and employees of Lincolnshire County Council have all experienced this.

It sounds an almost pitiful predicament. And yet, while it certainly isn’t desirable, some cyber-experts are now advising companies to plan for switching to paper-based processes in the event of IT failure.

Rather than an ad hoc workaround, pen-and-paper systems could be something staff practice using from time to time so that they can seamlessly switch away from their computers if necessary.