Introduction

Sometimes, having all your eggs in one basket can be detrimental to business operations. This has been learned the hard way with CrowdStrike. This cybersecurity firm is a global entity that many of the biggest companies use, including international airlines, many financial institutions, and more. It is a cloud-based firm that specializes in endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response.

On July 19, 2024, an update was pushed onto CrowdStrike that caused a halt to many companies around the world. The biggest airlines like American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines were facing huge delays and even cancellations due to this bad update. Financial institutions like Australia’s Commonwealth Bank, oil and gas traders in London and Singapore, and even health systems in England and the Netherlands were all facing issues that caused business disruption.

The CrowdStrike Update

To start with, this update was not the cause of a cybersecurity issue. There was no cyberattack on CrowdStrike, despite it seeming like there might be. This was all because of an update that was pushed out on July 19, which had a bad interaction with Microsoft computers, causing widespread errors that result in the “blue screen of death”.

This error continues to cause widespread problems throughout the entire world. There has been an additional update pushed out, which includes a fix to the error that was caused, but the damage has already been done. With the many restarts and updates that need to be done to computers, flights have been backed up, people can’t access bank accounts, and more.

How to Avoid IT Outages

While this is one of the biggest IT outages that has ever happened, there are plenty of ways to make this sort of thing easier to control. Updates are important, but no company is infallible to errors. Depending on one IT company can cause massive problems.

Controlled Updates

While updates are important to any system, things like this can happen. As said above, no company is perfect and updates can contain errors or incompatibilities that render entire networks inoperable, which is what happened here. Even though updates are important to any network, it is more important to consider what these updates contain. A simple security update can cause a massive outage, so it’s a good idea to hold updates until they are confirmed to be compatible with all networks.

Patch Management

Releasing a patch or a security update to a small portion of clients is a good idea. Sectioning off certain networks and tracking how the updates perform could have made this global outage much less “global”. It could have been caught immediately rather than shutting down multiple airlines and financial institutions. Making sure that there is a testing phase for these patches can avoid problems with a full release like this.

Tabletop Testing

Important to any cybersecurity posture for a company, tabletop testing can provide a cushion for problems that may arise. These tests outline procedures on what to do if a disaster were to occur. While they usually center around cyberattacks and various other malicious actions, they can also be applied to natural disasters and even network errors. In the event of an outage like what happened with CrowdStrike, businesses can refer to these policies to keep everything under control.

Conclusion

The CrowdStrike update caused a massive IT outage across the world. Computers and various other devices were getting fatal errors, causing the “blue screen of death” that forces a shutdown. There was a defect in the update, and it didn’t agree with many Microsoft computers, causing flight delays, bank problems, and even hospital issues.

Updates are crucial to any network and computer, but it’s important to manage these patches. Releasing them to smaller amounts of clients is a good practice, considering that errors can be contained much quicker. If something is causing an outage, it won’t be pushed to every client on the platform. Tabletop testing is also a good way to have backup plans in case there is an emergency, including errors or cyberattacks.