A life of an athlete without Garmin

This week, GARMIN experienced an incident that sends shivers down the spines of all IT departments in companies worldwide. Indeed, a hacker held hostage the entire service of the connected athletes’ favorite platform. And beyond this major crisis, the incident will have highlighted our dependence on our (ultra) connected sports environment, to the point of questioning whether it is now possible to live without it.

By Jean-François Tatard – Photos: Frédéric Poirier, Pixabay.com, Flickr.com

It was while discussing with some athletes this weekend that I realized the link that exists between athletes who use these connected watches or bike computers and this technological tool that is now part of our sports environment, just like a pair of shoes for a runner or a bike for a cyclist. With the unavailability of Garmin’s online services, some have postponed their training sessions.

What happened?

Several million of us are affected by this extraordinary situation. All users of the Garmin Connect platform are the target of a ransomware attack. A pirate software that has taken the American company and its customers hostage. Since Wednesday, July 22, we can no longer upload or view data from our GPS devices, and rumors are rife. There’s even talk of a ransom demand.

Why Garmin?

This could very well have happened to any other company. MMA insurance also experienced a similar crisis this week. No one is safe! But what is certain is that the greater the exposure, the greater the risk. User data represents invaluable value for companies. Realize that hundreds of millions of us use the platform. Moreover, once we consume the services, how can we do without them now? Garmin has made us ultra-captive and dependent. And the risk of all this is that as soon as the services of the company in question are unavailable, almost nothing works anymore.

Data sourcing

Connected watches analyze a multitude of increasingly intimate information. Speed, time, location, frequency, power, heart rate, steps, activities, sleep, etc.: everything is put through the mill! Tracking makes it possible to know users’ habits with perfect accuracy. And if they want, Garmin’s R&D engineers can know exactly what your life rhythm is and what best suits your profile. And the benefit for Garmin is to develop solutions that are always better adapted to customer needs. While some companies are forced to conduct market research before launching a new product, for Garmin, this data allows them to design ultra-targeted products and services and be even more certain that customers will buy. Needs are anticipated thanks to extremely precise data sourcing. This is also called social engineering.

The culprit?

Rumors are also rife. Initial speculation pointed to a competitor seeking to harm the market leader’s monopoly. But according to more reliable information, under the name Evil Corp, it could be a group of Russian (computer) hackers. And Garmin would not be the first victim of this type of massive hacking. These hackers target any large company with a large database. The damage always seems to be very significant. We had never experienced such a long interruption. Since Wednesday, we have had nothing, and no improvement date is planned. An eternity for a bikenerd or a runnerd.

What if we were witnessing the death of Garmin?

The scenario is quite improbable, even if we can imagine that it is possible that we might lose all our old data in the worst-case scenario. Let’s say that Garmin would have to have no backup, which seems impossible, or that this mirror platform itself is affected by the hackers. According to Olivier Darve, an IT expert for a pharmaceutical company, this hypothesis is impossible. Moreover, what is likely to happen is that once normalcy is restored, we will rush to our app to synchronize our watches and bike computers. There will be a traffic jam. In short, it is possible that the brand will do it in stages. So, in the best case, we will still have to wait. And to answer the question, Garmin will recover, but probably not unscathed. Indeed, it is very likely that Garmin will return to normal without data loss, but the incident will tarnish the brand’s image and, more generally, that of GPS systems.

To conclude

I grant you, I am only relying on theories or hypotheses; nevertheless, this situation will have revealed how vulnerable and dependent we are on this ultra-connection. At the same time that the Covid crisis made us discover our limits, this episode experienced by Garmin must also lead us to inhabit the world differently. This crisis can teach us a lot about ourselves and our relationship to sport. It reminds us, first and foremost, of profound human vulnerability in a world that has done everything to forget it. Our lifestyles and our entire new way of approaching cycling or running are based on a form of measurement that borders on excess. This is not only the fact of having a body and being mortal, but it refers to taking into account the materiality of our existence and our dependence on these ultimately futile tools.

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