At Lucid, we often talk about the importance of preparing for the worst when it comes to the technology that your business relies on, and last month there was a worldwide example of the impact that a technological disaster can have. In this blog, the Lucid team are reflecting on the CrowdStrike outage.
What is CrowdStrike – and Why Did It Matter?
You might never have heard of this firm before the outage, but CrowdStrike are a global software company that provide the Falcon Platform, a cloud-native framework that protects endpoints (including servers, mobile phones, and computers). Put simply, their platform provides security for millions of devices across the world — they serve 60% of Fortune100 companies, 13 of the top 20 major banks, and 7 of the top 10 largest energy solutions, to name a few.
Case Study: The Impacts and Aftermath
So, what happened? On the 19th July, news outlets began reporting mass IT outages. Flights were grounded, Stock Exchanges were experiencing issues, news channels went off air, and the healthcare sector struggled to access medical records. The cause of all of this chaos was a software bug in an update that CrowdStrike had released for the Falcon Sensor. Once installed, the Falcon Sensor is marked as a Boot-Start driver, which essentially means that Windows startup deems it mandatory in order to turn on the operating system. With this sensor down, over 8 million Windows computers worldwide crashed. It took days to manually remove the faulty update from each system, and CrowdStrike’s stock price dropped by over 35% — with investors now suing the company for allegedly false claims that the platform is thoroughly tested.
What Can We Learn?
As these events show, no matter how prepared we are, technology will occasionally let us down, whether from a malicious attack, human error, or simply equipment failure. There are plenty of ways to minimise the risks to your business, however — talk to the experts, and we can advise you on the best products to choose, create back-ups for vital data, and even assist in disaster recovery should the worst occur.
For more information on cybersecurity, you can contact the Lucid team here.
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