When major IT and cybersecurity incidents and outages happen, the industry rightly floods the IT Europa news desk with their opinions on the matter.
In our opinion, this is one of the best takes on today’s ongoing global Microsoft/CrowdStrike outage.
From Maxine Holt, senior director for cybersecurity at analyst house Omdia:
“The global IT outage crisis is escalating, and organisations everywhere are in full scramble mode, desperately implementing workarounds to keep their businesses afloat. Microsoft has pointed fingers at a third-party software update, while CrowdStrike admits to a "defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts", and is working feverishly with affected customers. This isn't a cyber attack, but it’s unquestionably a cybersecurity disaster.
Cybersecurity's role is to protect and ensure uninterrupted business operations. Today, on 19 July, 2024, many organisations are failing to operate, proving that even non-malicious cybersecurity failures can bring businesses to their knees. The workaround, involving booting into safe mode, is a nightmare for cloud customers. Cloud-dependent businesses are facing severe disruptions.
Omdia’s cloud and data centre analysts have long warned about over-reliance on cloud services. Today’s outages will make enterprises rethink moving mission-critical applications off-premise. The ripple effect is massive, hitting CrowdStrike, Microsoft, AWS, Azure, Google, and beyond. CrowdStrike's shares have plummeted by more than 20% in unofficial pre-market trading in the US, translating to a staggering $16 billion loss in value.
Looking forward, there’s a shift towards consolidating security tools into integrated platforms. However, as one CISO starkly put it, ‘Consolidating with fewer vendors means that any issue has a huge operational impact. Businesses must demand rigorous testing and transparency from their vendors.’
CrowdStrike's testing procedures will undoubtedly be scrutinised in the aftermath. For now, the outages continue to rise, and the tech world watches as the fallout unfolds.”
