On the 19th & 20th July, 8.5 million devices running Windows across the world stopped working. Those trying to start up their computers were met with the ‘blue screen of death’ error that rendered them useless. Airports, banks, supermarkets and hospitals were unable to access their systems, meaning that flights, payments, tv and healthcare ground to a halt. Businesses and organisations that depended on Microsoft were forced to cease operations. It was one of the largest technical outages in history.
What happened?
In the hours and days that followed this outage, it became clear that the error was not due to Microsoft, but instead due to an organisation called CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity firm, which protects businesses from cybersecurity attacks, viruses and hacks.
Cyberattacks are constantly evolving and changing, and as such businesses like CrowdStrike are required to continually update their security, and the security of those who depend on them by deploying software updates. Software updates are essential in protecting organisations; without them, you’re vulnerable to security breaches, viruses and hacks that could disable your device or steal your information.
On the day of the outage, CrowdStrike released a software update to protect Microsoft Windows devices from cyberattacks. However, the update was faulty, meaning that it didn’t communicate or work with the Windows devices it was trying to protect. CrowdStrike didn’t realise, and the software update was deployed to its cybersecurity product, Falcon.
Organisations that used Falcon for their cybersecurity, and Microsoft Windows for their operating system received the faulty update. Microsoft Windows is the most used operating system in the world, which meant that a huge amount of businesses were unable to use their technology. Without this, flights couldn’t take off, payments couldn’t be taken and GP appointments couldn’t be scheduled.
It was estimated that the outage, which lasted days, cost US Fortune 500 companies $5.4 billion.
If you lost access to your device, what would you do?
Transcendit Director Adam Kuznesof says that outages like these can be difficult for IT companies,‘We can determine how an outage is affecting a client, and then look at whether we can influence the thing causing the impact, and then beyond that, businesses like ours will be offering support and possible alternatives rather than a solution. Like the rest of the world, we just have to wait until the problem is resolved.’
Adam says that despite this, there’s still a lot that businesses can learn from the outage, ‘Outages like these, where the whole world is affected, are fairly uncommon. But it does prove how many of us are dependent on our devices, like our phones and our computers. Whether it’s your work device or your home device, if it dies, if it gets lost or if it is stolen, what would you do?’
‘Very few of us would be indifferent to losing everything on our phones, or everything on our computers, and backups are essential for this reason. Insurance might cover your physical equipment, but it won’t recover your programs, your software or your files. Organisations in particular need to be prepared, so that if something goes wrong, you can recover quickly and get back to running your business.’
Transcendit offers a range of backup solutions for SMEs. To find out more about backup and disaster recovery, give us a call on 0191 482 0444
