Crowdstrike chaos: Can we avoid another tech outage of that scale again? - The Front Page

A software update involving Crowdstrike and Microsoft products have days-long ramifications, including at airports, with thousands of flights cancelled globally.

Banks, airports, supermarkets, media companies, and retailers were left scrambling after what is being described as the biggest tech outage in history.

Microsoft estimates the outage meant about 8.5 million computers were disabled when an update from global cybersecurity company, CrowdStrike, went wrong.

In New Zealand, we saw long queues at retailers with Woolworths shutting some of its stores and halting online orders.

Aura Information Security, advisory consultant, Alastair Miller told The Front Page it appears the outage was a result of a lack of quality assurance.

“They didn’t do their testing with the latest Microsoft update and released a bit of software that conflicted badly with the Microsoft update and took all those PCs and servers out.

“It certainly demonstrates that the people who put in that hard work back then for Y2K, this is what they were trying to mitigate, these kinds of issues where it takes down all kinds of systems and things that you didn’t necessarily expect,” he said.

Miller said the widespread chaos only solidified the need for companies to have better mitigation plans in place.

“People have to be prepared for problems because we all know they do... You have plans for a fire escape and you practice that drill once a year. So companies have to have plans for what happens if we lose all our servers and how we get around that.

“I think we’ll find that some of them [companies] have recovered within 24 to 48 hours. Other ones will drag on for weeks and the ones that drag on for weeks will be the ones without good plans.”

People should not lose confidence in systems though, Miller said.

“We certainly need to be prepared ourselves, have our own fire drill or earthquake escape plan on what happens if we can’t use our card.

“Have a couple of hundred bucks in a drawer so we could then go and get groceries or whatever we need.”

watch the skies clear out over the united states after the global tech outage: pic.twitter.com/NXWL7Jm7iV

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) July 19, 2024

In a social media post, CrowdStrike said “a significant number” of devices impacted are now back online.

“We understand the profound impact this has had on everyone. We know our customers, partners and their IT teams are working tirelessly and we’re profoundly grateful. We apologise for the disruption this has created. Our focus is clear: to restore every system as soon as possible,” it said.

“We understand the gravity of this situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption.”

Listen to the full episode to hear more about how we can prevent another outage in the future, and whether we are too reliant on a small few companies.

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.

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