CBSA says 'fragile' IT systems are a 'top government risk' following border outages

Windsor ·New Transport trucks cross the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ont., to Detroit. A new report following a CBSA internal review of the Sept. 28 to Oct. 5 outages that caused delays at Canada-U.S. crossings lists 12 action items to be completed by next fall.(CBC) Some truck drivers reported delays that lasted days during the fall outages.(CBC) CBSA says 'fragile' IT systems are a 'top government risk' following border outages Report ordered by Ottawa, disputes claims by border officer's union that security lookouts were missed An internal review of technical outages that caused significant delays at airports and international land borders this fall has exposed critical flaws with the Canada Border Services Agency's IT services. The review found neither the CBSA nor Shared Services Canada (SSC) is prioritizing solutions to dated technology that should be declared "a top government risk." It goes on to say the CBSA's response to the outages was inadequate and inconsistent across the country, and that parts of the IT system are fragile. The review, ordered by Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree following the outages between Sept. 28 and Oct. 5, lists 12 action items to be completed by next fall. "I think the plan clearly makes that statement that we have a problem and we are going to fix it," said Stephen Laskowski, president of the Canadian Trucking Alliance. He said CBSA IT outages have been a common occurrence over the last decade. "To be quite frank with you, it's only escalated in severity with this fall perhaps being one of the worst outages, where we had truck drivers 24 to 36 hours stuck at the border." CBC News has put in a request to speak with Anandasangaree about the review's findings. What caused the 2 outages The outages happened after two separate, planned IT changes: a database upgrade and a firewall patch. A person with SSC did not apply the necessary patch to CBSA databases ahead of a routine upgrade Sept. 28 that caused "significant corruption of live traveller and commercial data." That led to "cascading system failures and service outages" at inspection points inside international airports and land borders, the report says. It created delays for air travellers because airlines needed to manually look people up on Transport Canada's "no-fly list." The outages prevented importers from submitting manifests for shipments entering Canada electronically, leading to a week-long backlog at highways, marine ports, and air and rail yards. It left some truck drivers waiting days to get into Canada. "Significant technical intervention has resolved the majority of the data corruption," but as of Oct. 25, "some recovery efforts continue," says the report. Patch led to communication breakdown While teams were dealing with the database issue, an emergency security patch was installed Sept. 29 on a CBSA system that helps airlines determine who is on the "no-fly list." But the patch caused a communications break between CBSA and airlines that led to a full outage lasting seven hours on a Monday afternoon. "The critical security...

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