First Off, Who (or What) Is CrowdStrike?
Similar to Norton, Symantec, or McAfee, CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company that provides endpoint protection, threat intelligence, and incident response services against malware, ransomware, and advanced threats.
They had made significant gains in the industry and were looked to as a top-of-market option for cybersecurity software. They are one of the largest players in the cybersecurity space, and their software is installed on millions of computers and servers.
Who Has CrowdStrike?
CrowdStrike would be purchased and deployed by either your internal IT team or a third-party consultant as part of a cybersecurity package.
Government, private, and everyone in between had CrowdStrike, so the update caused outages ranging from airlines and TV broadcasts to small businesses and manufacturers.
What Happened With CrowdStrike?
The CrowdStrike outage was caused by an automatic update from CrowdStrike.
The update was intended to enhance security but instead created a mismatch in input values, which led to an out-of-bounds memory read, causing system crashes across most devices running the CrowdStrike Falcon sensor.
A Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) showed up on most, if not all, of the computers running their software.
After the crashes, CrowdStrike quickly issued a detailed root cause analysis and provided steps to the public on how to get computers back up and running.
CrowdStrike Made Two Critical Mistakes
- They pushed an update without properly testing it.
- They pushed that update on a Friday.
What’s Next for CrowdStrike?
A long look in the mirror, a re-working of their update process, and a roughly 40% drop in their stock, which will likely continue as contracts come up for renewal.
How Does This Affect You?
Some might take this as proof that having cybersecurity software is just as risky as not having it — but the recovery timeframe for this incident was within a day, since techs had a clear path to recovery.
Recovery from an actual hack, on the other hand, can take weeks and cost millions in legal fees, lost contracts, and reputational damage.
We’re in an age of technology where you can wake up and find all your systems down, so it pays to have a plan in place for when your computers, email, or files go down for a prolonged period. This is exactly the kind of managed IT services and cybersecurity planning our team provides for Chicagoland businesses.
Contact LME Services and We Will Fix This For You
This is part of our full guide to Backup & Disaster Recovery.
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