The CrowdStrike software outage with Microsoft windows systems has highlighted just how dangerous it is to have one major provider for many of the world’s systems. The trouble stemmed from a software update to major cybersecurity company CrowdStrike systems. Currently there is chaos and confusion across many different industries globally with airlines being one of the industries most severely hit.
This whole thing brings to mind the infamous E-Corp, or “Evil-Corp” attack of Sam Esmail’s Mr. Robot. This makes me wonder whether this is really a failed software update or a nefarious hack that we are not alerted to. Such a thing would be sure to incite panic and disrupt consumer confidence.
From what I understand, companies for the most part would have their own in-house servers running software. At least two, one to serve as the main source of operations and the other to serve as backup if ever there were any failures or disruptions. Especially during attempted updates like this one. I feel like this is ideal so any missteps would only occur within one company rather than many.
With this event, I hope there is a realization that a global monopoly when it comes to cloud or software service providers is a detriment to the public. Any faults can put a halt across a multitude of businesses. The critical role of IT professionals and engineers is also realized through these events. Their knowledge is indispensable now and probably will be for many years to come.
I hope businesses across the globe learn from this event and make changes to avoid such a crippling vulnerability in the future. Perhaps consider diversifying segments of a business to more than one vendor so if one segment is disabled, the other is still able to pick up the slack and leave operations running. I understand that limiting vendors can offer more security as it limits who has access to company systems but the weakness in staying with one doesn’t seem worth it.
To all those who suffered during this outage, I hope things are improved soon. As it stands, it looks like this may be considered the largest IT outage in history.
References
https://apnews.com/live/internet-global-outage-crowdstrike-microsoft-downtime
https://www.wired.com/story/crowdstrike-outage-update-windows
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/19/latest-live-updates-on-a-major-it-outage-spreading-worldwide.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUmfDGS2anU
©JustTalkingShep 2024
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