Navigating The Crowdstrike Outage: Insights From A Tech Industry Veteran
Gigaom, Friday, July 19th, 2024
As a seasoned CIO/CISO and tech industry analyst with 35 years of experience, I've seen my fair share of cybersecurity incidents. However, the recent CrowdStrike outage stands out due to its extensive impact across multiple sectors.
Here's a deep dive into what happened, the repercussions, and the lessons we can all learn from this incident.
Background and Initial Reaction
I started my journey in IT in the late '80s when I wrote a piece of software called PleadPerfect. Over the years, I've worn many hats-engineer, architect, and executive at both large and small companies. For the last 18 years, I've been a CIO/CISO for organizations ranging from 8-11 figures in revenue.
When I first heard about the CrowdStrike-related outage, my initial reaction was one of deep concern. I took a moment of silence in honor of the lost hours my peers and fellow IT pros sacrificed with their families to fix a problem that should never have occurred. The lack of good QA practices shown by CrowdStrike is deeply upsetting. They should have caught this issue in testing before releasing it to the public. The fact that it affected every Windows OS since 2008 is inexcusable.