Firewall upgrade at telco linked to four deaths in Australia

"Two customers contacted Optus's call center early on Thursday to report that calls to 000 had not gone through. "As we had not detected the Triple Zero failures in our network at the time of these calls, there were no red flags for the contact centre to alert them to any live issues," Rue said. Optus is searching call center logs and as of Sunday believes at least three other customers reported the outage."

"But it was not until a customer reported the problem at 13:30 on Thursday that Optus "became aware of the severity of the incident." Australian law requires carriers to check the welfare of customers after any 000 outages. After Optus did so, it identified three deaths linked to customers who may have tried to call emergency services for help. In a Sunday statement Rue said the company is speaking to staff who performed the upgrade to understand why they did not follow procedures."

Optus upgraded a firewall at around 12:30AM on September 18, after which customers were unable to reach the 000 emergency number for fourteen hours. Initial testing and monitoring did not show issues with call connectivity and national call volumes did not flag problems. Two customers reported failed 000 calls early on Thursday, but the contact centre lacked indicators to escalate. A customer report at 13:30 on Thursday alerted the company to the severity. Mandatory welfare checks after the outage identified three deaths linked to customers who may have attempted emergency calls. The company is investigating staff actions, will implement an escalation process, and has expressed remorse.

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