A simple guide to the Crowdstrike issue and what it means for your IT

I've been waiting a while to post this, mostly because I want to " wait for the dust to settle."

Let's talk about the Crowdstrike issue that occurred on Friday, 7/19.

What we know

CrowdStrike is a U.S.-based cybersecurity company that sells cybersecurity software to businesses. It currently supports roughly 29,000 customers.

• Falcon Sensor is their flagship software, which they mainly sell to customers. This heavy-handed EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) protects your PC from malware and/or ransomware (think Windows Defender, but on steroids).
• They are currently worth about $75bn annually.
• By the end of Friday, the issue affected over 8.5 million devices. This affected everything from flights that were canceled to broadcasters that went off the air, trains that didn’t run, and medical procedures that were delayed around the world.

On Friday, their flagship software, Falcon Sensor, bugged out because of an update that was rushed out and not thoroughly vetted. A single line of code from this update crashed Microsoft Windows operating systems worldwide. Luckily, their response was better than average. They were able to respond with a fix within 24 hours that had users going into Safe Mode, deleting a single file, and then rebooting normally again. The only problem is that this would require an on-site technician to run this series of commands. If a company didn't have internal IT, then their 3rd party vendor would be required to perform an onsite visit, which usually costs a lot more money.

EDR and cybersecurity systems are already developed and provided by several firms, so luckily, this firm isn't the only company. However, lost work time for their affected clients = delays in service for their customers = lost revenue. This is a no-no in the IT and cybersecurity world.

So, what does this mean?

In IT and cybersecurity, this service is still essential, as it is needed to manage endpoints correctly. Other companies provide staggered ring release channels, which are usually a safer bet.

When situations like this occur, ensure you have redundancies available so you are not affected by an outage that is this severe.

𝗦𝗼 𝗳𝗮𝗿, 𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 $𝟱.𝟰𝗯𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗱𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆.

Real talk: This is some scary shit!

Avoid becoming a victim

If you want to protect your systems and/or provide redundancies as needed so you are not affected by issues like this, then DM me so we can talk. In the worst-case scenario, you'll receive valuable advice on what systems to protect and how to protect them! Speak soon.