**What Caused The Massive Verizon Outage And Should You Be Worried About Cybersecurity?**

On Wednesday, January 14, thousands of Verizon Wireless users were left stranded without cell service and data for much of the day. The outage was widespread, affecting nearly the entire East Coast, with major metro areas like New York City, Washington D.C., Boston, and even Chicago and large parts of California and Texas forced to stare at an "SOS" message where their service bars should have been.

The good news is that Verizon has since attempted to make things right by offering a $20 credit to users who were inconvenienced by the outage. But what exactly went wrong, and should Verizon customers be worried about another incident in the future or their cybersecurity?

**A Feature Update Failure: The Likely Cause**

According to Roger Entner of Recon Analytics, a telecommunications research firm, the outage was likely caused by a failure while trying to launch a feature update. "It looks like their 5G SA (Standalone) core went down during a minor feature change," Entner told CNET.

So, what made Entner think this was the case? For one thing, the outage was limited to new high-end devices in specific markets where Verizon uses its 5G SA core. This is a network that uses only 5G technology, rather than a combination of 5G and older 4G LTE infrastructure.

Entner pointed out that if it were a matter of a failed update, it's unlikely to happen again without human error. "When carriers do massive upgrades, they do that between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. in the morning," he explained. "A noon start for the crash indicates 'fat fingers' for a smaller change that cascaded through the system."

**No Indication of Cybersecurity Threat**

Verizon was quick to reassure customers that the failure did not come down to a cybersecurity threat. In a statement, the company said: "This was a software issue and we are conducting a full review of what happened. As of now, there is no indication that this was a cybersecurity issue."

**Should You Be Worried?**

While it's clear that Verizon took steps to mitigate the damage and has offered compensation to affected customers, the question remains: should you be worried about another incident in the future?

The answer, for now, is no. With Entner's analysis suggesting that human error was likely the cause of the outage, and given Verizon's track record on cybersecurity, it's unlikely that a similar event will occur again.

However, as we've seen, it's clearly not impossible. And with more and more carriers relying on complex network upgrades to stay ahead of the competition, the risk of human error causing widespread outages remains a very real possibility.

**Conclusion**

The Verizon outage was a stark reminder that even with the best-laid plans, technology can still go wrong. While it's unlikely that a similar event will occur again, it's a timely reminder to stay vigilant and prepared for the unexpected.