Our thoughts on the CrowdStrike Outage Debacle
Mark Bush, CEO of RAD Computers, provides an overview for non-tech people of the CrowdStrike outage that began in the evening of July 18th, 2024.
on 2024-07-19 |
Reading Time: 3 minutes
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Hello everyone, Mark here. I rarely send out Public Service Announcements, but considering this is heralded as “the largest IT outage in history”, I wanted to send a brief message about the “CrowdStrike Outage”, and what you can expect to experience in the coming weeks, from an IT perspective.
Who/What is “CrowdStrike”?
CrowdStrike is a major player in the realm of cybersecurity. They’re a “good guy”, and their role is to assist companies in securing their IT infrastructure from malicious threats. To put it into perspective, over 500 of the Fortune 1000 companies leverage the CrowdStrike platform to secure themselves internally. CrowdStrike has over 1,000,000,000 (1 Billion) computers under its protective wing, encompassing computers both in and out of major corporate entities.
What happened and where?
On July 18th 2024, a faulty update was pushed through CrowdStrike’s “Falcon” platform, which is one of the core components to their protection. This faulty update caused the computers to enter a boot-loop, unable to finish loading with a screen similar to one we’re all certainly familiar with:
It’s safe to assume that nearly every Windows-based computer and server using the CrowdStrike platform was adversely affected, worldwide.
How does this affect me (and my business)?
Great question. RAD Computers does not utilize CrowdStrike. We use a myriad of alternative tools to provide similar protection to our residential and business clients, so any services you receive from us are not affected. HOWEVER, this outage is MASSIVE and has a very broad and far-reaching impact. I have read reports of large industries being affected:
- Airlines (Delta, United, Allegiant, etc)
- Transportation (public transit, rentals, and some ride share apps like Uber)
- Financial entities (banks, brokers, lenders, credit card processors, etc)
- Manufacturing
- Medical facilities, including major hospitals
- Telecom (cellphones, landlines)
- Online Services (Microsoft, Amazon, Google)
- and way, way more…
The list goes on and on. So many companies leverage CrowdStrike that you’re probably only 3 degrees away from a system that’s affected by this issue.
When will this be resolved?
Could be a brief downtime, could be a very long road to recovery. That part is up in the air right now. I’ve been keeping up with the news, IT-centric groups and forums, and personal friends in the IT-space that are all having various levels of success in restoring operations.
What should I do?
If you have any loved ones that are expecting to take a flight today, please check on them as they may be grounded without an action plan.
Aside from that, try to continue your day business-as-usual. Please understand that this outage is worldwide, and IT people around the world are holding their breath while scrambling to get systems back online. Systems you may need to access through the internet could be down… Even if your service vendor isn’t using CrowdStrike, they may rely on infrastructure that IS affected by the CrowdStrike issue.
On a related note, while IT people around the world work together to get this issue resolved, we ALL appreciate your patience and understanding that this was out of everyone’s control.
For More Information
To keep up to date with the news on CrowdStrike, you can check this link, which goes to DuckDuckGo search results (I know some of you don’t like Googles Results, so I have chosen the DuckDuckGo link to support your privacy concerns).
Thank you!
As always, if you have any comments, questions, or concerns, please feel free to reach out to us. Since we are not utilizing CrowdStrike, we are lending ourselves to assist other local IT providers in doing damage-control to restore operations for their clients. We will have staff at our Mesa location ready to assist anyone that walks in the door or calls, and all of our managed clients can still reach me directly by phone.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, it really shows support for RAD Computers, and speaks volumes to your support for me, personally, as some of you have been with me since the beginning. I appreciate all of you. Thank you – Mark (and Paul, and Huda, and Araceli)
About the Author: Mark Bush
Mark Bush is the CEO of RAD Computers. He's personally fixed over 10,000 computers since 2001. He created RAD Computers in 2010 and added Managed IT Services for businesses in 2018. He developed RAD Computers to over 700 5-star reviews using his expertise. His key to success is educating people about computer repair, maintenance, and security.
NOTE: Some links on this page may be affiliate links, and help support our business. These links do not alter the cost of the product, but provide a small percentage of the sale to us as the referral source.
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As someone who owned a web hosting company, I would not want to be in their shoes. It does not seem like they put enough effort into testing before releasing the update.
You’re a person of many talents, Ben! And I totally agree, the fallout is still going on it seems. Some of the groups we’re in on Facebook still has people posting about being stuck in the aftermath cleaning up and getting systems back online. What a nightmare!