On-site hero

We see nifty promotional videos of experienced engineers who are otherwise engaged (fishing seems to be a favoured pastime amongst the demographic), being swiftly and easily contacted, casting their eye over the available data or even a video of the process in question – all of which conveniently pops up on their ever present tablet – and solving the problem from anywhere in the world.

For any company with multiple or remote sites, this is an attractive proposition; experienced engineers do not have to spend time travelling to various sites and in theory, less people could cover more sites. The model could also help ease the shortfall of engineers being widely experienced, as well as saving money through increased efficiencies.

However, listening to the news this week about how Russian hackers allegedly carried out a powerful cyber attack against French television network, TV5Monde, got me thinking about whether operating remote engineers is such a great way of doing things after all.

Although this cyber attack did not take place in the industrial sector, it could easily have, with highly targeted malicious software being used to destroy TV5’s network systems.

Yves Bigot, director-general of TV5Monde, told the BBC: "We were a couple of hours from having the whole station gone for good."

What ensued was effectively a race against time, as more systems were infected with each passing minute. According to the BBC any substantial delay would have led satellite distribution channels to cancel their contracts, placing the entire company in jeopardy.

So what, or who, was the hero of the hour? It was the engineers, or course. And not remote engineers, but engineers who were on site. The cyber attack took place on the same day the network had launched its latest channel, which meant the technicians were on site.

"We were saved from total destruction by the fact we had launched the channel that day and the technicians were there," said Bigot.

"One of them was able to locate the very machine where the attack was taking place and he was able to cut out this machine from the internet and it stopped the attack.

"We owe a lot to the engineer who unplugged that particular machine. He is a hero here.”

What would have happened if the engineer hadn’t been on site? Who knows? As it was, TV5 had to wait months before being reconnected to the internet, forcing staff to resort to using fax machines as they couldn’t email.

So while the idea of remote engineering sounds good in principle, when it comes down to real life situations, in many cases you really can’t beat an engineer being there on-site.