Dependent

23 April 2011 - A 75-year-old Georgian woman who says she has never even heard of the internet is facing a possible prison sentence for single-handedly cutting off the web to an entire country. Georgian police arrested Hayastan Shakarian after she allegedly hacked through a fibre optic cable that runs through Georgia to Armenia, while digging for copper. With one stroke, the pensioner plunged 90% of internet users in Armenia into online darkness for nearly 12 hours. The episode is a timely reminder that all it takes in our hi-tech world to shut down thousands of companies for a day is a determined old lady with a spade. Research carried out in October 2010 by Avanti Communications offered a snapshot of just how fundamental the internet had become to businesses. The survey of companies worldwide suggested only 1% could function adequately without the internet. More than a quarter (27%) of those surveyed said they could not function at all if the internet went down, and one in five said a week without being online would be the death of their company. "In the past, network downtime might have prevented a batch of communication at the end of the day," says Chris Kimm, vice-president network field operations EMEA at Verizon Business. "Today it could mean no phones, no e-mail, no customer database, no ordering systems, no supply chain visibility and effectively, no capability to conduct business."