Solar Cycle 25 Forecast - this is not good news for Technology

[Caute_cautim]

Hi All

Now I can envisage several Security Practitioners stating "what the ..." is he going on about now.  @CraigS 

Well its the state of the Sun, which has a 22 year Solar Cycle - from a High Frequency communications perspective, which covers Military, Government and Amateur Radio, we have been crawling on the bottom of the cycle.   However, over the next couple of years - critical infrastructure systems, including Satellite can be disrupted due to Solar Flares - well from this article - organisations had better be ready, because if the predictions are correct - never mind COVID-19 another form of disruption could potentially cause outages worldwide.   I wonder if it will cause disruption to EV Charging systems?

Good for High Frequency communications, but expect disruptions of a form, that some people and organisations have never experienced, so start preparing your organisations and ensure it is in your Risk Register, even if you think right - he has definitely lost the plot!!

"If these predictions are correct for Solar Cycle 25, it is very, VERY good news for ham radio.  BUT – it may be BAD NEWS for our society which is highly dependent on technology.  This prediction is a warning for power companies.  In 1989 the entire province of Quebec, Canada, had an electrical power blackout cause by a solar storm.  Read NASA’s description HERE.  Satellites are also in danger from a more active sun.  Not only are their electronics vulnerable, but solar heating of the atmosphere can cause more “drag” on orbiting items and that can cause their orbits to decay."

The Zoom presentation was recorded and you can view it in its entirety at the following link:

Zoom Meeting:  "Solar Cycle 25 Prediction and Why It Will Be Huge!"

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/NMlTa_PcxJMN335-sN-Hhq5t1WzbmTY-qNTDt1SCedeR9pxPdG6o3p_046iVtmAI.q...

The password is:  z7qCn@3G

Regards

Caute_cautim

[mgorman]

I'll have to check this out later when I have some time. 

As someone who as in the carrier wireless business for 18 years, I can attest to the impacts of solar events.  We could see even relatively minor events in the statistics.  When you have a large carrier and huge numbers of calls, there is always that edge where calls are just barely hanging one, and these events move that edge. (Defined in a power/interference kind of way, not necessarily geography) The number of lost calls and ineffective attempts increase and you can actually lay out the charts of variance and solar activity next to each other and see the correlation.  We did it to explain to the management why the numbers were where they were on particular days, as we were incredibly performance driven.

[JKWiniger]

I don't have the energy to watch this right now, but I believe it to be a very worthwhile topic. I have said to people for ages that unexplained data corruption could in fact to related to solar flares. My bigger question is are there are ways to test if we are protected from something like this? It almost feels like one of those tings where you don't know until you know and then it's too late.

John-

[Caute_cautim]

@mgorman   All I can say, is ensure it is on the risk register and you have a good well rehearsed playbook for the situation.  It will happen, so lets be prepared, to go back to basics - now where are those "Valves" sets? 

Regards

Caute_cautim