CrowdStrike Falcon Outage: Strategies to Reduce Risk

Early Friday morning, many businesses worldwide were impacted by a defect in an update released by CrowdStrike, a widely-used cybersecurity firm. Specializing in threat intelligence and cloud workload protection, CrowdStrike is a trusted vendor for many organizations.

The update caused workstations to experience outages, leaving them unable to serve their customers. Affected industries included banking, health care, media, transportation, telecommunications, and some 911 emergency services.

The outage was caused by a defect in a single update to Microsoft Windows systems leveraging CrowdStrike Falcon, not a cyberattack. The update left many consumers facing the “blue screen of death” on their systems, rendering them unusable due to the poor interaction of the Windows workstations update. Many news sources reported this could be the largest global outage in IT history.

Strategies to undertake considering the CrowdStrike Falcon outage

Incidents like this are unfortunately common. Organizations must take proper steps to recover from a misconfiguration, threat, or attack. CLA can help your organization prepare for these events and create effective plans to help reduce the impact.

CLA can help create Business Continuity Plans (BCPs). Our risk management team can help identify potential risks and develop thorough risk mitigation strategies.

Creating a BCP involves:

• Conducting a risk assessment to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities.
• Developing a disruption response plan, including procedures for alternative work arrangements, backup systems, and communication.
• Testing the plan to verify it’s adequate and employees are prepared to respond in the event of a disruption.

Each BCP is tailored to organizations’ specific circumstances. CLA works closely with clients to understand their needs and develop a plan for continuity of business operations in case of a disruption.

How CLA can help reduce risk

CLA’s cybersecurity team has years of experience performing IT risk assessments, control reviews, and custom cybersecurity testing. Reach out for assistance assessing and mitigating your risk for a cyberattack.