Hacked or sabotage? Cox email global outage

[gfost1]

Howdy,

What cox hasn't released says more than what they have said. I know zip about e-mail systems, but the latest update speaks for itself:

Summary

Email Outage Update as of 12:00 pm, December 16th

Detail

Our teams are making progress in our email service restoration efforts. Through our investigation, we have isolated the cause of the failure to the email system platform which ultimately affected both the primary and secondary failover (back-up) systems. Currently, all incoming messages are queued in our system and we expect to deliver messages to customers on a rolling basis as we bring the systems back online. Teams across all levels of our organization remain intensely focused on the restoration efforts. Unfortunately, we do not expect services to be restored today. We do understand the impact this is having on our customers, which is why we have deployed every resource possible to working this issue. While we are focused on restoring email access as quickly as possible, the multiple components and processes that make up our email system require care, and some time, to bring them back online. Our next scheduled update is 3:00 pm, however we will update this alert with new information as we have it.

Are we to believe this is the result of a monumentally poor design?

Regards,

George

[ShotgunBlast]

Are we to believe this is the result of a monumentally poor design?

Regards,

George

Since we are talking about Cox, yes.

[Chasbo00]

Never did think much of the Cox suckers technical management ability...

[gfost1]

Howdy,

A little more info trickles out:

Summary

Email Outage Update as of 3:30 pm, December 16th

Detail

First we want to acknowledge the impact of the residential email service outage on our customers. We know this experience is not consistent with our promise to deliver reliable products and services, and sincerely apologize for the frustration this has caused.
Here is what we know:
We have isolated the cause to an issue within the email storage platform that supports Cox Residential Email in service areas in our Midwest and East Coast regions. This outage does not affect Cox Business customers.
Cox technical teams are working around the clock with email platform vendors to restore service as quickly and safely as possible. Unfortunately, we do not expect services to be restored today.
This outage is not the result of a cyber-attack or any form of cyber terrorism.
Some customers have asked about a redundant backup system. Our enterprise infrastructure exceeds industry standards and includes multiple levels of support designed to ensure reliability. Unfortunately, this outage affected the primary and secondary failover (back-up) systems...

So, sounds like they outsourced the residential email. I wonder if it is Monday morning yet where their email storage platform vendors live.

It may not be cyber-terrorism, but cyber-negligence is right up there.

Regards,

George

[OakRidgeStars]

[OakRidgeStars]

Tragedy adverted. Cox has restored email service for the East and Midwest.

[gfost1]

Tragedy adverted. Cox has restored email service for the East and Midwest.

True, residential email service has resumed for customers of Cox. Less certain is what broke where and who actually fixed it. Who and where are their "email platform vendors?"
How does this outage scale to a SHTF scenario?
Regards,

George

[lukertin]

People actually use email accounts their ISP provides them?

I'm shocked to learn this...

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

[gfost1]

People actually use email accounts their ISP provides them?

I'm shocked to learn this...

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

Howdy,

Yeah, and was a satisfied customer until it quit working. My previous ISP, pre-broadband, offered no spam filtering. Right before I switched to Cox, I was getting 200-300 messages per day, all spam. Now I check my messages once a week whether I need to or not, and there is never any spam. Only problem we ever had was my wife's sent mails started getting rejected as spam. Cox told us it wasn't them; we switched email clients and problem solved. Still haven't figured that one out.

Regards,

George