No matter what shape or size of your business, always track and verify your assets.

Tens of millions in the UK were unable to call or text, nor use 4G connections On Thursday, millions of people in the UK were without cellular coverage following the expiration of a digital certificate associated with Ericsson’s network.

An initial root cause analysis indicates that the main issue was an expired certificate in the software versions installed with these customers. A complete and comprehensive root cause analysis is still in progress. The outages initially affected software used by O2 and its parent company, Telefonica, but eventually the outages showed up downstream on carriers like: GiffGaff Sky Mobile Lyca Tesco Mobile All of whom rely on O2’s network.

Overall 32-million people were without service in the UK and millions more in Asia. From Ericsson’s official statement: “During the course of December 6, most of the affected customers’ network services have been successfully restored. We are working closely with the remaining customers that are still experiencing issues.”

Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm has also strangled the culprit personally. “The faulty software that has caused these issues is being decommissioned and we apologize not only to our customers but also to their customers,” Ekholm said. “We work hard to ensure that our customers can limit the impact and restore their services as soon as possible.”

They haven’t figured out what kind of digital certificate it was that specifically expired — whether it was a signing certificate that expired and there was an issue with time-stamping or if it was an SSL/TLS certificate — but as we say all the time: this is what happens when your certificate expires.

This is an easily preventable issue, but also an entirely common one. It’s difficult to keep track of certificate expiry when you’re managing a large network. Nobody gets that better than us. But there are plenty of solutions, many of them turn-key, that can help keep you on top of these expiration dates. It’s a small thing, but it can have big ramifications.

So, once again, sorry for beating a dead horse but stay on top of those expiry dates. As always, leave any comments or questions below…