What is CrowdStrike: Key Insights and Updates
On Friday morning, a massive outage affected major airlines, TV broadcasters, banks and other essential services worldwide. This outage, which caused the Blue Screen of Death on numerous Windows machines, was linked to CrowdStrike.
CrowdStrike helps companies find and prevent security breaches. It claims to have the “fastest mean time” to detect threats. Since its launch in 2011, the Texas-based company has investigated major cyberattacks, including the Sony Pictures hack in 2014 and Russian cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee in 2015 and 2016. As of Thursday evening, CrowdStrike’s valuation was over $83 billion.
Trending on Techlopedia: 3 Best Online Advertising Channels to Grow Your Business
CrowdStrike has around 29,000 customers, including more than 500 in the Fortune 1000. However, its popularity caused widespread issues when something went wrong. On Friday morning, systems using CrowdStrike and Windows-based hardware went offline in droves.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the company is “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.” He emphasized that the issue isn’t linked to a cyberattack and doesn’t affect Mac or Linux machines.
People Also Read: Quickly Organize Apps on iPhone With Our Guide
The July 19th outage is linked to CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform. This cloud-based solution combines multiple security tools into one hub, including antivirus, endpoint protection, threat detection and real-time monitoring. The faulty update installed software onto the core Windows operating system, causing systems to get stuck in a boot loop.
Systems displayed an error message stating, “It looks like Windows didn’t load correctly,” with options to troubleshoot or restart. Many companies, including an Indian airline, resorted to manual methods to cope.
Recommended for You: What is a Computer System – A Guide by Techlopedia
“Our software is extremely interconnected and interdependent,” says Lukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity researcher and author of the book Philosophy of Cybersecurity. “But in general, there are plenty of single points of failure, especially when software monoculture exists at an organization.”
CrowdStrike has deployed a fix, but restoring systems won’t be simple. Olejnik says it could take “days to weeks” to resolve. IT administrators may need physical access to devices to get them working again. The speed of recovery depends on the size and resources of a company’s IT team. “Some systems in specific circumstances may be unrecoverable, but I assume the majority will be recovered,” Olejnik adds.
