Last week we saw a world-first with the Australian Taxation Office being taken off-line due to a glitch in its computers.
This was announced just before 9.30am on Monday 12th December, with access to tax and superannuation information back online by Tuesday evening, but certain tools and portals still remained unavailable to the public 48 hours later.
The ATO chief information officer, Steve Hamilton, said that no taxpayer information had been compromised. Specialist engineers were called in, and they worked alongside ATO staff through the night to rectify the outages. The crash came about due to a failure in a hardware storage solution provided by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, but additionally, the primary back-up systems that should have kicked in were also affected. The glitch is believed to be the first of its kind in the world, according to the head of the government agency. Unlike the trouble-plagued online Census, the ATO system was not brought down by any external factors such as a denial of service attack.
Initial fears that a petabyte of data was lost have now been clarified as being unfounded, with the ATO confirming that no taxpayer information has been compromised or lost and that no taxpayers will be disadvantaged as a result of the outage.
A return to normal operation is expected next week, and the ATO will be fully investigating the events of last week, with a comprehensive independent review.
Here at Fortis Accounting Partners we are happy to help with any queries that you may have – please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us on 02 9267 0108; or via info@exemplary-financial.flywheelsites.com.
