Data breaches, cyber-attacks, unstable server crashes and software dependencies: for companies facing public tech failures, efforts to restore brand loyalty can be as expensive as litigation costs, so the fear of losing investor and customer commitment should be as great a worry as the operational disruption such failures cause.
2021 bade us farewell with a reminder that unplanned events do happen: Facebook’s outage in October and Apache’s Log4j vulnerability exposure in December were just two of numerous events that disrupted digital stability and security last year, with costly impacts for the companies affected and their brand reputations, as well as for their consumers.
Log4J: a software vulnerability with far-reaching impact
In December 2021, the internet was alerted to a vulnerability in the logging system Log4j, a widely-used software which, much like a record keeper, helps developers track changes in applications that they build. Apache’s Log4j software is embedded in numerous popular internet services including Twitter, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Netflix and Oracle. The flaw, which enabled attackers to break into systems, steal passwords and logins, extract data, and infect networks with malicious software, had gone unnoticed since 2013. Yet there was no evidence of mass exploitation until the 2021 public disclosure from Apache, after which threats on associated companies using the system increased.
The software bug is considered one of the most severe vulnerabilities in the internet’s recent history. As well as causing huge operational disruption as organisations using Log4j scrambled to apply fixes, the flaw had an impact on brands, with concerned users and investors taking to online searches to find out which companies and services were affected.
The potential repercussions of bugs like this are not limited to software companies. With practically all companies now relying at least in part on online services, websites and apps, strategists across industries have one immediate reflex when such vulnerabilities arise: “How will this impact the brand?”. Loss of market share is the main quantifiable measure of the impact of security breaches, so managing customer confidence has become a central pillar to their mitigation strategy.
The Apache Log4j vulnerability is more than a simple software vulnerability: it affects the wider digital economy. At the time of writing, the long-term impact on companies, both reputationally and economically, is incalculable. Not only is this the largest vulnerability exposure in 10 years, but it is ongoing – the security patches deployed are already being penetrated. Very soon, we will however be able to measure the impact to brand equity, in related search volumes and in stock prices.
Protecting yourself from the costs of tech failures
Recent, smaller-scale tech failures continually demonstrate the costly impact of similar events. In October 2021, Facebook’s platforms suffered a six-hour blackout resulting in a near 4.95% fall in stock price. As a result, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, lost nearly $6 billion. Facebook rebranded its parent company to Meta later that month. In a company memo, Facebook’s global security operations centre determined the outage was “a high risk to the reputation of Facebook”.
Though not everyone has the reach or value of Facebook, no company is immune to such unplanned events. When faced with a tech failure, companies often respond by adopting expensive measures to preserve or redress their brand position. And although some companies also take preventative measures, lamentably few direct pre-emptive positioning to the first place people search to find out more when a tech failure hits: Google. Post-crisis, the quality of a Google search results page is enough to influence brand loyalty for consumers and shareholders alike – so ensuring Google’s users see accurate information that supports your intended brand narrative when they carry out a search is vital in protecting your brand.
Many of us will choose to kick off the new year with thoughts of strength, resilience and preparedness. It’s worth also making a resolution to look after your digital health in the coming year – positioning yourself to be resilient in the face of an unexpected tech failure will help to protect your brand throughout 2022 and beyond.
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We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email webrequests@digitalis.com
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to webrequests@digitalis.com