Crowdstrike Outage In a Nutshell – Plus Tips to Keep Your Business Safe

The largest Computer Outage in history just happened, affecting over 8.5 million computers worldwide. This event impacted major businesses around the world, including banks, airlines, tech companies, hospitals, and more.

So what exactly happened?

Crowdstrike is one of the leading cybersecurity companies in the world. Like most cybersecurity software companies, they deploy updates almost daily to stay ahead of cybercriminals.

On Thursday night, July 18, 2024, Crowdstrike was deploying another routine update. Except this time, the update was not fully tested, and there was a bug in the code. The “blue screen of death” error message appeared on millions of devices.

A fix was readied within hours of the outage but the steps to implement the fix were highly manual in many cases, leading to an extended outage that lasted almost a full week.

This event has a lesson to learn for ALL businesses everywhere.

1. First and foremost, put together a disaster recovery/business continuity plan TODAY. Click IT Computers has some tips and valuable resources on our disaster recovery/business continuity page. Contact us now for more details.

2. Make sure your backup software is working and that you can restore from it. Click IT Computers can help you test and perform a “fake” recovery on one of our computers to confirm your backup is working. Click this link to schedule an appointment. https://chagrinfalls.clickitco.com/contact-us/

3. Make sure you are using state-of-the-art cybersecurity software. Note - if you are just using the antivirus software that came with your computer, know that this is NOT ENOUGH and often still leaves you vulnerable. Click IT Computers offers several solutions at very affordable prices based on your business needs.