CrowdStrike Crash

Over 8 million computers flashed the “Blue Screen of Death” at the end of July, due to a major technical issue at cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike. What exactly happened, and how were people affected?

What is CrowdStrike?

CrowdStrike is an American company that supplies internet security products to protect to large businesses across the world from malware and ransomware.

What Happened?

As is common practice, CrowdStrike released an update to their Falcon cyber security sensor. The update was meant to help mitigate emerging cyber-attacks. Unfortunately, there was bug in the update, and any Windows systems that downloaded the new files crashed. The bug caused the affected devices to go into a reboot loop and become completely unusable.

There were hundreds of businesses affected by the crash across the globe. In Australia, finance, retail, transport, media, and air travel all experienced large technical outages for some hours.

Which Businesses Were Affected?

Finance: NAB, Westpac, ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, Bendigo Bank, and Suncorp.

Retail: Woolworths and Coles (Marvel Stadium experienced ticketing issues).

Travel: NSW Regional Train systems, V/Line systems, and freight train organisation Aurizon.

Air Travel: Qantas, Jetstar, and Virgin Australia.

Media: ABC, SBS, 7 Network, and 9 Network.

CrowdStrike began solving the issue within the hour, although users were warned about problems occurring for up to 2 weeks after. Beyond this, customers were informed of heightened scam activity, as scammers were ready to take advantage of the situation. People received messages from fake CrowdStrike technical support and messages from fake airlines. Additionally, it is vital to be extra cautious of scammers and potential cyber threats while organisations recover from the downtime.

This mass technical downtime event reinforces the great importance of having solid business continuity and backup plans. No product, no matter how advanced or widely used, is perfect. Even industry leading software can experience pitfalls, meaning you need to be prepared for any issues that may arise, particularly the unexpected ones.

Synapse IT has the right people, tools and processes to ensure your business is protected in the event of downtime. Contact our friendly team to discuss which Business Continuity and Backup Plans are best for your organisation.