What 16 Major 2016 Outages Teach Us About Disaster Recovery

We have selected sixteen outage incidents reported in the media so far in 2016 to reconstruct the year’s major service disruptions.

Incident 1: HSBC website login failure

Time: 2016.1.6 Cause: Not disclosed Duration: 24+ hours Impact: 17 million personal and business customers Source: 金评媒 http://www.jpm.cn/article-5578-1.html

Incident 2: GitHub global service interruption

Time: 2016.1.28 Cause: Network interruption Duration: 6+ hours Impact: All hosted open‑source projects Source: 开源中国 https://www.oschina.net/news/70289/github-down

Incident 3: Amazon e‑commerce site outage

Time: 2016.3.10 Cause: Not disclosed Duration: 20 minutes Impact: Amazon main e‑commerce site and cloud services Source: 新浪科技 http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2016-03-11/doc-ifxqhfvp0711977.shtml

Incident 4: ANA domestic flight check‑in failure

Time: 2016.3.22 Cause: Not disclosed Duration: 1 day Impact: Delays at multiple domestic airports Source: 中国新闻网 http://www.chinanews.com/gj/2016/03-22/7806495.shtml

Incident 5: Beijing Yizhuang data‑center power outage

Time: 2016.4.22 Cause: Power outage Duration: 7 hours Impact: Village‑bank and multiple financial institutions hosted in the facility experienced full service interruption Source: 云头条 http://www.yuntoutiao.com/dongtai/6020.html

Incident 6: Salesforce large‑scale outage and data loss

Time: 2016.5.12 Cause: Power outage Duration: 20 hours Impact: 14 North American sites lost 4 hours of data Source: 今日头条 http://www.toutiao.com/i6283708317688660481/

Incident 7: Shanghai Film Festival ticketing server crash

Time: 2016.6.4 Cause: Excessive traffic Duration: 1 hour 15 minutes Impact: Movie‑goers could not purchase tickets Source: 腾讯科技 http://tech.qq.com/a/20160604/013727.htm

Incident 8: Alipay payment failure

Time: 2016.7.22 Cause: Failure in a South‑China data‑center Duration: 2 hours Impact: Some users unable to pay online or offline via Alipay Source: 中国新闻网 http://www.chinanews.com/it/2016/07-22/7948369.shtml

Incident 9: WeChat Moments and article display failure

Time: 2016.7.30 Cause: Server failure Duration: 2 hours Impact: Some users could not open public posts or articles Source: 北青网 http://china.ynet.com/3.1/1607/30/11535585.html

Incident 10: Delta Air Lines major computer system outage

Time: 2016.8.8 Cause: Power outage Duration: 6 hours Impact: 451 flights cancelled Source: 科技新报 http://technews.cn/2016/08/16/corporate-it-spending/

Incident 11: Google Cloud Storage and backup service interruption

Time: 2016.8.9 Cause: Not disclosed Duration: Several minutes Impact: Some cloud users saw “Server encountered an error, please try again later” messages Source: 中关村在线 http://server.zol.com.cn/598/5983060.html

Incident 12: Sohu QuickSite outage

Time: 2016.8.20 Cause: Hardware fault in two fiber links at Beijing Unicom North‑visible data‑center Duration: 1 hour Impact: Some Sohu QuickSite sites inaccessible Source: IT之家 http://www.ithome.com/html/it/251063.htm

Incident 13: Sina Weibo partial outage after news of Qiao Ren‑liang’s death

Time: 2016.9.17 Cause: Server overload Duration: 1 hour Impact: Some users could not log in; hot searches not displayed Source: Techweb http://www.techweb.com.cn/irouter/2016-09-17/2394359.shtml

Incident 14: Mobike app unavailable due to server crash

Time: 2016.9.19 Cause: Server overload Duration: 7 hours Impact: Bikes not shown in app, unable to unlock or end rides Source: 新民网 http://shanghai.xinmin.cn/xmsq/2016/09/21/30444405.html

Incident 15: Large‑scale DDoS attack knocks out major US East‑coast sites

Time: 2016.10.22 Cause: IoT device vulnerabilities exploited for DDoS Duration: 7 hours Impact: Twitter, Tumblr, Netflix, Amazon, Shopify, Reddit, Airbnb, PayPal, Yelp and many others unavailable Source: 新浪科技 http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2016-10-22/doc-ifxwztrt0100881.shtml

Incident 16: ING Bank data‑center outage

Time: 2016.11.2 Cause: Fire‑drill exercise Duration: 10 hours Impact: Over one million users unable to use ING services Source: 新浪科技 http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2016-10-22/doc-ifxwztrt0100881.shtml

Analysis

The 16 incidents were caused by undisclosed reasons (4), power outages (3), server overload (3), hardware failures (3), network interruption (1), external attack (1), and fire‑drill exercise (1).

They span the Internet sector (11), finance (3), and aviation (2); other domains such as healthcare, public transport, energy, and telecom likely experienced similar outages.

Conclusion

Disaster‑recovery systems should be established early; luck is not a strategy.

Information systems are critical infrastructure; their security concerns core data assets, corporate survival, personal livelihoods, and even national stability.

The 13th Five‑Year Plan of China emphasizes strengthening information‑security guarantees, protecting important information systems and data resources, and ensuring security across collection, storage, application, and sharing.

For information and data security, disaster recovery is the most fundamental technical requirement; virtually all information assets need backup protection to maintain operation after unexpected failures.

Business continuity management is an engineering effort, not solely an IT department responsibility.

Risk and threat points in information‑system environments are often multiple and dynamic; simply stacking security products is ineffective.

Information‑system security is a systemic issue involving technology, personnel, organization, environment, law, and management; it should be addressed with holistic, dynamic principles, techniques, and methods.