Massive Crowdstrike & Microsoft outage- BSOD day

Businesses worldwide faced a significant IT outage on Friday, causing disruptions across various sectors and many are saying as the BLACK FRIDAY. Financial services and doctors' offices experienced interruptions, while some television broadcasters went offline. The impact on air travel has been especially severe, with planes grounded, services delayed, and airports advising passengers on how to manage the situation.

All it seems the fascinating Global IT Industry will coin a new term to get announced in the Industry today.. Today will be remembered as BSOD day!

This widespread outage has highlighted the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to IT failures and has prompted urgent responses from IT departments globally. Efforts are underway to restore services and minimize the disruption to operations and customers. The incident underscores the need for robust contingency planning and resilient IT systems to withstand such unforeseen challenges.

The Indian government is in touch with Microsoft and its associate companies regarding the global outage and is hopeful of a solution soon, union electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.

BSOD - Blue Screen of Death. Enough bluescreens today! Unfortunate to see MS bearing the brunt. A expert says, while we were grown with bluescreens and Apple challenged that.. today we remembered our good old days with MS again.. though it is not their issue..

Al Lakhani, CEO of IDEE, expressed concerns about CrowdStrike's platform approach, which relies on a single agent focused on detection. He stated, "CrowdStrike’s platform approach, which relies on a single agent focused on detection, might seem good at first glance, but as we can see, it can create significant issues. For instance, agents require installation and maintenance of software on multiple different OSes, adding layers of complexity and potential points of failure.

Moreover, agents can become a single point of failure, as a bad update can compromise the entire network, as seen with the SolarWinds attack.

"The lesson here is blindingly obvious: investing in cybersecurity is not just about acquiring the latest or most popular tools but ensuring those tools are reliable and resilient. This is why businesses must prioritize agentless solutions like MFA 2.0, which reduce the risk of widespread failures and ensure more resilient defenses."

David Varney, a partner at UK law firm Burges Salmon, highlighted the importance of preparedness in mitigating the effects of IT outages. He said, "The effectiveness of mitigation measures during unforeseen IT outages largely depends on the preparedness and resilience built into an organisation's business continuity strategies. The current CrowdStrike outages are a stark reminder of the importance of proactive planning and regular testing to ensure business resilience in the face of unforeseen challenges."

These insights underscore the necessity of robust, resilient cybersecurity measures and the importance of proactive planning to mitigate the impact of IT outages on business operations.

Sandeep Bhambure, Vice President and Managing Director, India & SAARC, Veeam Software, the pervasive IT outage on July 19, 2024, throwing a ‘Blue Screen (BSOD) and hanging systems around the globe, disrupted installations and almost grounding businesses globally. This widespread disruption impacted critical services across multiple industries including airlines, banks, and hospitals. This outage highlights how digital infrastructure is vulnerable to disruption and so too is our dependency on it for critical services, especially as this was not the result of a cyberattack or malicious activity. This underscores the crucial importance of robust and reliable backup and recovery solutions for ensuring business resilience. Preparedness is key to data resilience and secure backup and recovery solutions are not just an IT concern, they are a strategic imperative for any organization aiming to safeguard its future. By investing in comprehensive data resilience strategies, businesses can ensure that they are well-equipped to navigate the uncertainties of the digital age and maintain continuity and trust in the face of adversity.

At Veeam we are committed to providing the tools and expertise necessary to build resilient, future-proof organizations. We focus on five key pillars: Data Backup, Data Security, Data Recovery, Data Freedom, and Data Intelligence. In today's volatile IT environment, powering data resilience allows our customers to not just maintain continuity and keep running, but to thrive amidst disruptions.’

Going forward, while we enter into the world of MACHINES and ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE.. we still have a solution to all this.. Digital Twins - leveraged by Aruba to predict future is an example which I feel all will embrace..

Driverless car, Factory run by machines, flying cars, machines operating on humans - hope I don't see bluescreen after doing all this automation. Today country shuts, moving forward humans would SHUT!