How Mobile & Telecoms Managed CrowdStrike IT Outage
For those who look forward to Friday as the end of their working week, last Friday was a ride through chaos, beginning with the unsightly view of Microsoft’s ‘blue screen of death’.
Cyber-security firm CrowdStrike quickly admitted that there was a problem caused by an update to its antivirus software, which is designed to protect Microsoft Windows devices from malicious attacks.
But in what should have been a simple update for the 221,000 employees at Microsoft and the 7,000 at CrowdStrike, it was the start of a long weekend to resolve the problem. Microsoft promised that it would "’work around the clock" to provide "ongoing updates and support".
"Crowdstrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts... The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed," said CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz.
So how did the mobile and telecommunications sectors fare in the chaos?
Telecoms sector and mobile industry both braced for impact
Those working across airlines, banking, healthcare and the media picked up their training from the pandemic and worked to come up with solutions, while supporting frustrated customers. At airports, boarding passes were handwritten - and uploaded to social media - while hospitals were simply forced to cancel appointments.
Just after announcing that it would invest US$100m in AST SpaceMobile, Telecom giant Verizon admitted that the global IT issues would impact some of its services and store operations, but that its network was not impacted.
Australia's Telstra Group also faced disruptions to some of its systems.
While social platforms were mostly unaffected, social media feeds were awash with CrowdStrike memes, which went onto mock or outright celebrate businesses solutions.
Starbucks was among the companies experiencing difficulties due to the systems outage, resulting in a temporary outage of its mobile order ahead and pay features.
An alert for the Starbucks mobile app stated: "Mobile ordering is currently unavailable. Please visit one of our stores and place your order with a barista."
For many speedy customers, face-to-face ordes are of a bygone era. According to a study by the Italian restaurant Prezzo, Gen Z reportedly suffers from ‘menu anxiety’ and are too timid to order their own food.
“I am now personally affected by this because I had to order my Starbucks latte verbally and stand in a line,” one customer, Sherrod DeGrippo posted on X. “Am I entitled to compensation?”
From delayed flights to cancelled coffee orders, CNN has speculated that costs from the global outage could reach US$1bn.
Mobile device protection software kept users online
As mobiles do not typically run the same endpoint protection software used in desktop and server environments, mobile devices were generally less affected by the outage.
“Most mobile operating systems, such as iOS and Android, utilise different security measures and have not been directly impacted by this specific CrowdStrike sensor update issue,” said Brandon Hart, CTO of Everything Blockchain Inc.
"The issue here is largely MS Windows OS systems,” shared Justin Endres, CRO of Seclore. “Mobile devices aren’t really at any threat, but the data centres of the world are a different story.”
Justin discussed this in depth, exclusively over at our sister title Data Centre magazine.
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