CrowdStrike IT Outage Causes Widespread Disruption Across Industries
The recent IT outage experienced by CrowdStrike has had a significant impact on commerce, healthcare, and transportation industries worldwide. What makes this outage particularly concerning is that it affected all sectors and functions, regardless of location or industry, as long as they were using devices on a Microsoft network with CrowdStrike protection.
This was not a sector or function-specific glitch, similar to the unconnected interruption to CHAPS transactions overseen by the Bank of England the previous evening. The outage caused widespread disruption and inconvenience, but thankfully, it did not result in any catastrophic consequences.
The functionality that made CrowdStrike so popular in providing security for systems is what ultimately led to its downfall. As a company that focuses on protecting endpoints, which are devices connected to a network, CrowdStrike holds around a quarter of the security market, amounting to hundreds of millions of computers that were individually affected. This made the impact unpredictable but widespread.
The impact of the outage was felt in various industries, with some companies unable to access their automated check-in systems, like Ryanair, while others, such as easyJet, were able to continue operations. Retailers, like Morrisons and Waitrose, experienced difficulties in processing card payments, while others were able to function normally.
One of the most affected industries was transportation, with airlines and airports forced to ground and cancel flights due to security being a top priority. The problem spread globally as the software update hit and systems were turned on, affecting countries like Australia, Europe, and the US. In the UK, 14 operating companies were affected, causing potential disruptions and delays for train passengers.
Banks, on the other hand, seemed to have been spared from major disruptions. While Barclays confirmed that one of its services, Smart Investor, was affected, other major high street lenders reported that their branches and payment systems were functioning normally.
Currently, the focus is on how long it will take to fix the issue, how to prevent a similar incident from happening in the future, and what actions businesses can take to recoup their losses from CrowdStrike. The company has assured the public that they are working on a fix, but there are concerns that it will require a machine-by-machine reboot to restore devices back onto networks.
Questions have also been raised about how this could have happened and whether the lack of competition in the industry, dominated by major players like CrowdStrike and Microsoft, contributed to the widespread impact of a small error.
Corporate lawyers, who were able to get their computers up and running, may be considering seeking compensation for the significant losses incurred by businesses during the outage. In the meantime, the public can only hope that this incident serves as a lesson for companies to have better contingency plans in place to avoid such disruptions in the future.
