Come on guys get the basics sorted out

The first lesson for any IT / Telecoms Infrastructure Engineer is the importance of physical security and therefore I am really surprised about some recent breaches which have caused serious network downtime.

The first example is in Hertfordshire back in Aug 2005, when thieves broke into a site which brought down the Vodafone Paging network. More unbelievably is that 160k users are still using Vodafone Paging services.

The next breach was on 17th October which is shrouded in mystery and to me looks a little like an inside job, where allegedly £6m of Cisco kit was stolen and brought down the Easynet/Sky network. Apparently:

"Two of them, they used a valid swipe card to open the side gate, went in with a van; down to the basement. Helped themselves to a load of kit, loaded it up, drove out.”

Finally on the 22nd October, Vodafone again was hit with someone entering a North Wales facility and:

"There was a robbery of some cabling in north Wales and that caused parts of the network to go down. The Midlands, parts of the north-west and south-east, and north Wales were affected."