Major global outages can disrupt many aspects of life, from transport and shopping to healthcare and banking. But there is a silver lining: they can help us build stronger, more robust cyber strategies.
As you’ve probably already heard – and maybe even experienced first-hand – a routine update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike recently caused chaos around the world. While our systems weren’t affected – resulting in minimal disruption to our customers – the event remains crucial to us here at Reliable. Why? Because it’s something we can all learn from, and use to improve our strategies.
Here are 5 vital lessons that we can all take away from the July 2024 CrowdStrike outage:
1. Patch management is more important than you think
When big, trusted names like CrowdStrike launch an update, it’s natural to assume it’s safe to apply. But as this incident has shown us, everyone makes mistakes. Our security and estate management platform, N-able, ensures all patches are tested, safeguarding our clients from potential disruption.
2. You need eyes on your systems at all times
Look away – even for a moment – and anything could happen. This event has shown us just how important it is to continuously monitor IT systems so that any issues can be identified and dealt with promptly. The longer issues go undetected, the more disruption they can cause to operations.
3. Every employee should be involved in digital security
Would your employees know what to do if they experienced an event such as the CrowdStrike outage? Would they know who to report it to? Would they know how to implement any contingency plan? This really highlights just how critical it is that every member of staff is trained in cybersecurity.
4. Communication matters
How do you communicate with your vendors? How good are they at keeping you informed of what’s going on? During the CrowdStrike event, CEO & Founder George Kurtz quickly released a statement on social media, communicating openly with customers. Do you trust your vendors to do the same?
5. Planning for the worst is key
We all like to hope for the best. But if this event has shown us anything, it’s that we also need to plan for the worst. Sometimes, despite doing what we should, things happen. And when they do, it’s absolutely crucial that we have recent backups to rely on, and a recovery plan ready to implement.
In a perfect world, the CrowdStrike outage would never have happened. But it did. And we can look at it in two ways. We can either dwell on the frustration of the disruption. Or we can turn the event into something more positive; we can use it to improve our knowledge, and strengthen our approach to IT. Here at Reliable, we’re choosing the latter. We see it as a way of promoting the importance of adhering to best practices, and ensuring we’re ready and prepared for any unexpected challenges.
If you share our view, contact us to find out more about how you can strengthen your own network.Â
