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August 2024 #16301 Page #33
What Can We Learn From the Recent CrowdStrike Debacle? By Glenn Traylor
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n the early morning hours of July 19, 2024, there was a major collapse of world commerce.
According to the company CrowdStrike, a defect in a content update to its Falcon cybersecurity defense software for Windows caused a world-wide crash that impacted many businesses, most notably the airline industry. According to Microsoft, the CrowdStrike IT outage affected 8.5 million Windows devices. This incident immediately resulted in work stoppages, stranded passengers, and lost revenue. No explanation has been given to justify releasing the software update without adequately testing it first. The good news is that the Georgia-based restaurant Waffle House was not impacted!1 What did the impacted businesses do? Unfortunately, some were paralyzed and unable to conduct business. Others instituted emergency protocols that allowed them to continue operating albeit in modified fashion. One interesting example was an overseas airline that switched to handwritten baggage claim tickets and boarding passes so that they could move passengers in spite of the computer crash. Personally, I was very lucky that my normal carrier successfully transported me out of Houston on time Friday night; although I did then spend five hours cooling my heels in Atlanta, I was very glad I did not have to rent a car, as many of my fellow travelers did, or have to wait until the next day for a flight home. The millions of people affected by this major disruption of global commerce had one very simple thing in common—in some way, their lives were directly affected by their dependence on computers. In particular, the computers were dependent on Cloud-based resources that had stopped working.
What Is Your Level of Preparedness? Seeing so many people face the so-called “blue screen of death” on their computers should give us all pause. Do you have any contingency plans for situations like this or other emergencies? Will your team members know how to keep your business operating? Ask your team these questions: 1. Fun fact: The Waffle House Index is used by Emergency Management because of the business’s ability to recover from an emergency. It’s based on Waffle House’s reputation for having great disaster preparedness and staying open during extreme weather or reopening quickly afterwards. Continued next page
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