SQS lists 2011's worst software failures

Phil Codd, MD and chief markets officer (Northern Europe, India and South Africa) at SQS said: "Our top-10 list of 2011 shows that software failures are costing companies and consumers large amounts of money. What is worse is that people are losing jobs and, in some cases, their liberty because of avoidable software failures.

"Voted on by SQS consultants, this year's annual software bugs survey is based on major software failures of the past 12 months, from glitches that generated massive fines in the banking and finance sector to mass recalls of faulty vehicles. Our 2010 report also highlighted computer glitches in the financial and automotive industries and, this year, both of those sectors are prominent in our top 10, taking four of the top-10 slots.

"The main problem caused by software bugs is negative financial impact and, in almost every case, consumers end up losing out. Deficiencies in software quality often result in costly emergency fixes and/or damage to a brand's reputation, but each of our top-10 2011 software failure examples could easily have been avoided through an effective quality-management strategy identifying and resolving potential glitches before they appear," he concluded.

Top software failures of 2011

1. Financial services giant fined USD25 million for hiding software glitch that cost investors USD217 million.

A software error in the investment model used to manage client assets resulted in this international financial services giant being fined USD25 million by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The company also had to repay the USD217 million that backers lost when told that market volatility rather than software failure was to blame for their investment losses.

2. Computer system bugs cause Asian banking facilities' downtime.

Computer system problems at one of Japan's largest banks resulted in a nationwide ATM network of more than 5600 machines going offline for 24 hours, Internet banking services being shut down for three days, delays in salary payments worth USD1.5 billion into the accounts of 620 000 people and a backlog of more than a million unprocessed payments worth around USD9 billion.

3. Cash machine bug benefits customers by giving them extra money.

An Australian bank began giving out large sums of money from 40 cash machines across one city. Officials at the company said they were operating in standby mode, so could not identify the account balances of customers.

4. Leading smartphones suffer an international blackout.

Core and back-up switch failures resulted in network services across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America going down for three to four days. The blackout left millions without email, web browsing or instant messaging services and were reportedly due to server problems at one data centre, in Slough.

5. Bugs in social networking app for tablet just hours after delayed release.

Just hours after its release, this social networking site's long-awaited tablet app was already receiving reports about minor bugs from clicking through to pages via panel icons to problems posting comments.

6. Twenty-two people wrongly arrested in Australia due to failures in new NZD54.5 million courts computer system.

A new NZD54.5 million (USD42.7 million) computer system linking New South Wales courts and allowing documents to be lodged electronically, led to damages claims for unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution after 3600 defects in the electronic transfer of data from the courts to the police's database led to the wrongful arrest of 22 individuals.

7. 50 500 cars recalled after airbag-related software glitch.

A glitch in the automaker's software design and testing approach, which meant that airbags for passengers in the right rear seat during a crash may not be deployed, resulted in the recall of 47 401 vehicles in the US and a further 3099 in Canada and Mexico.

8. Recall of one million cars addresses fire and rollaway concerns.

A Japanese car company was forced to initiate a worldwide recall of over one million vehicles affected by a design flaw allowing residue from window cleaners to accumulate, which can degrade the switch's electrical contacts and potentially cause a fire over time. This recall followed a global 2.5 million recall by the same company due to design flaws that allowed vehicles to shift out of park and engine stalls.

9. Telecoms glitch affects 47 000 customers' meter readings and costs company NZD2.7 million.

After a software glitch that resulted in customers hitting their data limits early, some 47 000 customers, who were overcharged, were reimbursed by a New Zealand telecoms company in a NZD2.7 million (USD2.1 million) payout.

10. Army computer glitches hinder co-ordinated efforts in insurgent tracking

An army computing system designed to share real-time intelligence with troops in the front line has hindered troops by being unable to perform simple analytical tasks. The USD2.7 billion cloud-based computing network system runs slowly when multiple users are on the system at the same time and the system's search tool made finding the reports difficult as the information mapping software was not compatible with the army's existing search software.