We've taken a look back at what went wrong during 2021 and we list some of them:

Commonwealth, ANZ, St George Bank, Reserve Bank of Australia, Hong Kong Stock Exchange

A software bug that occurred in the system of a big network provider knocked banks, airlines and other companies all over the world offline during peak business hours in Asia, only some days after another major web services company crushed and world's top websites went offline due to a software bug that triggered when a single customer changed a setting.

Banking services of Westpac, the Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, St George and other financial institutions went all down not because of a cyber-attack but because of a glitch which disrupted the service that protects them against DoS (denial-of-service attacks). Many of them had their traffic rerouted in minutes but it took more than four hours to fully restore the system. As a result of this delay, the Reserve Bank of Australia cancelled a bond-buying operation due to technical difficulties facing several banks that were to participate.

Mizuho Bank

The last system glitch from the series of system glitches that hit Mizuho Bank during 2021 resulted in affecting 387 bank transactions by causing delays in money transfers for foreign exchange trades. Automated teller machine operations and foreign currency remittances also went into trouble. The bank announced that the problem has been identified but it took days to recover.

Chase Bank

Α technical issue caused thousands of Chase bank account holders to see incorrect balances. One man woke up to suddenly find himself as one of the wealthiest people in the world thanks to a computer glitch that transferred $50 billion to his Chase Bank account accidentally. The bank admitted that a software glitch impacted some accounts but they didn’t specify the number of the accounts. On the other hand, many Twitter and TikTok users published screenshots that show their Chase Bank account balance appear as if they are $50 billion in debt.

Lloyds, Bank of Scotland and Halifax

Customers of all three banks who are part of the wider Lloyds Banking Group –Lloyds, Bank of Scotland and Halifax- left unable to access banking apps and online web services. A huge surge in complaints appeared at social media as people couldn’t check their balance or make any payment while it has been reported that cash machines also appear to be offline in an apparent network glitch. Roughly 65% of customers noted issues with online banking, whilst the remaining 35% complained about their banking apps.

JP Morgan Chase

JPMorgan Chase announced that a technology issue allowed a limited number of customers to see account information (account balances, transactions and customers’ names and account numbers) of other customers with similar personal information with them via the bank’s mobile app or website for almost 2 months. Despite the limited reach of this data breach, it still costs both in reputational damage and in regulator penalties. The bank offered affected customers a free year of credit monitoring to partly compensate them for the insecurity they caused them.

European Central Bank

Several European financial institutions left stranded during the vital hours near the close of business due to a glitch in the European Central Bank’s payment system. That means a big number of users -which cannot be calculated- were forced to rely on their own record keeping as they lose their access to the system. According to the European Central Bank, the issue did not affect payments and ancillary systems; however it affected the system’s information and control module.