The CrowdStrike outage: A wake-up call for cyber resilience

Introduction

Even cutting-edge tech can be taken by surprise. In our rapidly evolving digital landscape, the most reliable systems can encounter unexpected hurdles. The latest global outage caused by the CrowdStrike update sent shockwaves through the industry and serves as a pivotal case study for tech and security leaders. This incident underscores the necessity for comprehensive strategies to enhance cyber resilience.

Understanding the CrowdStrike outage

CrowdStrike, a leading cybersecurity firm known for its advanced endpoint protection and threat intelligence, caused a significant global outage when its routine content update was deployed without proper testing, causing about 8.5 million Windows hosts to fail to boot and disrupting services globally – i.e., the very software designed to protect IT systems caused the crisis. This update, intended to enhance security, introduced a bug that impacted how CrowdStrike interacted with Microsoft operating systems, ultimately leading to widespread outages. According to an evaluation, the outage impacted 674,620 direct customer relationships and over 49 million indirect connections. Such incidents, while rare, highlight the vulnerabilities that can affect even the most sophisticated infrastructures.

Outage aftermath: Unveiling the silver linings

Key learnings from the outage

Complexity of modern cybersecurity systems: The outage underscored the intricate nature of cybersecurity frameworks. As systems grow more complex, the potential points of failure increase, necessitating meticulous oversight and management.

Platformisation might not be the right strategy: Platformisation can introduce complexity, making it harder to diagnose and resolve issues. A single flaw or bug in a highly integrated platform can have cascading effects across multiple systems, processes and security functions.

Importance of redundancy and failover mechanisms with defined RTO and RPO: Despite CrowdStrike's advanced technology, the outage revealed potential gaps in redundancy and failover protocols. This incident emphasises the need for robust backup systems to ensure continuity of service.

Communication is crucial: During any such outage, a proper communication strategy with the clients and stakeholders is critical. Transparent and timely communication can mitigate the impact of an outage by keeping users informed and managing expectations.

Incident response readiness: The outage demonstrated the importance of having a well-prepared incident response plan. Swift identification and resolution of the issue are crucial to minimising downtime and damage.

Act now, secure tomorrow: Critical next steps for tech and security leaders

In light of such incidents, tech and security leaders must reassess and fortify their cyber resilience strategies with these key steps:

Staging and testing: To mitigate risks for mission-critical systems, it is advisable to test updates in a staging environment including rollback testing, stability and interface testing, and implement staggered rollouts. This practice ensures that potential issues are identified and resolved prior to live implementation.

Conduct comprehensive risk assessments: Regular risk assessments are essential to identify potential vulnerabilities. This proactive approach helps in understanding and mitigating risks before they materialise into significant issues.

Enhance redundancy and failover protocols: Implementing robust redundancy and failover mechanisms ensures that services remain operational even when primary systems fail. This includes leveraging geographically dispersed data centres and automatic failover capabilities.

Develop a robust incident response plan: A well-documented and rehearsed incident response plan is vital. This plan should outline specific roles, communication strategies, and recovery procedures to ensure swift action during an outage.

Invest in continuous monitoring: Continuous monitoring is crucial for identifying and responding in any system anomalies. Leveraging advanced analytics and AI can enhance these capabilities.

Foster a culture of security awareness: Educating employees and stakeholders about cybersecurity best practices is essential. Regular training sessions and awareness programs can significantly reduce the risk of human error.

Why data backup and recovery are your best business investments?

Disaster recovery and data backup drills are essential components of cyber resilience, ensuring that organisations can swiftly recover from incidents and maintain preparedness. These drills simulate real-world scenarios to test and validate recovery plans, identify vulnerabilities, and enhance incident response capabilities. By regularly conducting these exercises, organisations can ensure data integrity and availability, meet Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO), and comply with regulatory requirements. Drills foster a culture of preparedness, raise employee awareness, and build confidence in the organisation's ability to handle disruptions. The drill reports are also crucial for updating and refining the incident response plan and for Business Continuity Planning (BCP), aiming to mitigate impact and risk in the event of a recurrence.

Tata Communications' Cyber security solutions help foster cyber resilience and are designed to ensure that organisations can quickly and effectively respond to disruptions by focusing on advanced data backup, air-gapped, purpose-built recovery environments that support 100 percent DR backed by guarantees from our geo diverse data centres while ensuring a stringent RTO and RPO objectives. This approach not only enhances cyber resilience but also ensures that businesses can continue to operate smoothly, even in the face of unforeseen disasters.

Conclusion

The CrowdStrike global outage serves as a critical reminder of the ever-present risks in the technology landscape. For tech and security leaders, the incident underscores the importance of robust risk management, continuous monitoring, and having a well-prepared incident response plan. By learning from such incidents and implementing proactive measures, organisations can better protect themselves against business disruptions, ensuring the continuity and security of their operations.