CrowdStrike Outage Impacts Over 8 Million Computers

The recent CrowdStrike outage, that continues to have global implications, reinforces the fact that cybersecurity solutions help manage cyber attack risks, but can also be a source of risk. The level of system access, which is necessary to provide security, can also be used to disrupt systems and used maliciously by attackers.

This event has a combination of attributes that amplify the impacts: the issue causes catastrophic system impacts (i.e. the dreaded BSOD), across a large number of systems, in Critical Infrastructure sectors, and the offending code possesses deep permissions within the computing stack. 

We are all fortunate that the CrowdStrike incident was accidental, as reported by their CEO, instead of malicious. The cybersecurity industry must learn and adapt to maintain the right balance to provide protection and not unnecessarily increase risks in other areas.


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