Disaster recovery...What if?

How to mitigate mass panic in the event of a disaster - Lessons learned from Crowd Strike incident

Airports, supermarkets, even hospitals were affected by the outage, causing billions of dollars in losses still to be calculated…

Everything is unlikely. Until it happens.  Reflecting on the CrowdStrike disaster which caused major worldwide disruption, it is a timely reminder for us to look at all software and systems provided to businesses and simply ask the question, “What happens if….?”

For example, What happens if the internet fails?  What happens if Microsoft 365 goes down?  What happens if an update has a knock on effect that nobody is aware of? Etc By asking the question we can be more prepared, especially for things that are ‘left of centre’ or even completely out of our control!

So exactly what happened with CrowdStrike that put the world on check like that?

Software which has access to the core of the operative system pushed out an update which had an adverse knock-on effect.

Examples like this are all over the industry, some of them making the headlines, other ones just covered up to prevent these companies to lose reputation, but the damage is always done to the end user - people that reply on their computers and systems to always operate.

Remember Samsung’s Flagship Galaxy Note 7 Phone which was rolled out worldwide but soon found to have major design flaws with its battery and was recalled!  This was caused from Samsung wanting to beat the competition and be first to market with the latest technology to gain market share.  Fixing bugs later via updates seems to be the accepted norm these days, thus everyone is constantly reacting to bugs and updates which have unknown knock on effects to other systems. This is a dangerous cocktail so Crowdstrike won’t be the first or last to accidentally cause chaos.

Samsung faced $17 billion loss from Note 7 recall

When the next disaster strikes, having clear, documented strategies to implement in the event of various circumstances will provide pathways for any business to be up and running more quickly than you would otherwise be.  Contact Computer Clinic to work through your list of scenarios and solutions so you are proactively prepared for the next time disaster unexpectedly strikes.