A defective software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike for its Microsoft Windows hosts left hospitals, banks, airlines, and other businesses scrambling during a global mass IT outage weeks ago.
CrowdStrike founder and CEO George Kurtz has since apologised to their customers and partners in a letter he penned in the aftermath of the outage, saying that nothing is more important to him than their “trust and confidence.”
The aftermath
In the aftermath of the outage, verified business and technology professionals participating in Gartner Peer Community polls and discussions revealed that the majority said the outage had some impact on their organisations, with 47% saying it had either a severe impact (14%) or a significant impact (33%) on their operations. In comparison, 20% said there was no impact.
To mitigate risks and manage the impact of the outage, organisations focused on employee support by assisting affected employees with alternative work arrangements and internal updates (59%). Almost half (48%) said their organisations focused on activating recovery procedures and guiding the help desk on increased calls, while 44% of respondents said their organisations focused on incident response by activating in-depth security investigations and response procedures.
Other actions organisations took are implementing additional security controls (30%), providing updates to customers and external stakeholders (28%), communicating directly with CrowdStrike (25%), seeking support from external consultants, vendors (23%), and service providers, and talking directly with Microsoft (16%).
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