14 DAY TRIAL // Visitors to the Financial Times web page yesterday might have noticed that there were no new articles published and that other data had not been updated either. This happened because somebody nicked (British for stole) "equipment" from 3rd party facilities where it was hosted. It has not been disclosed what type of equipment has been stolen, but rumors talk about servers, switches and routers. The police have been informed and a formal inquiry has been launched.
A spokesperson for the Financial Times issued this statement: "There is currently a reduced service on FT.com due to equipment being stolen over night from our third party hosted data center site. We are working with our supplier to replace the missing equipment and will restore full functionality as soon as possible."
As a direct result of the theft, the Financial Times had to resort to US backup facilities since it was unable to upload new material to their site. It seems that Cable and Wireless was hosting that equipment and had to ensure its safety.
Cable and Wireless comments on the recent events: "Cable & Wireless has experienced some network issues that have regrettably affected a number of our customers. The issues have arisen following a break-in at one of our network sites in Watford, during which some of our equipment was stolen. This has interrupted some of the services to customers for whom we provide managed hosting services."
Other web pages to go down after the incident are the ones for Sainsbury's and Ordnance Survey. For Sainsbury this is not the first time that such a thing happens to their web page. While the site was down, this message was posted: "We are very sorry that you are unable to get access to our groceries site at the moment. This is due to a technical problem that our internet providers, Cable & Wireless, are experiencing."