CrowdStrike’s outage reveals the fragility of our tech ecosystem

Starting late Thursday, many around the globe experienced a taste of the “good” ‘ole technology free days, as an outage linked to a not-tested-enough software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (not a cyberattack) knocked out systems at major banks, logistics providers, airlines, hospitals, retailers, and more.

The fallout: 911 services in certain areas were unavailable, airlines were forced to cancel thousands of flights (or turn to paper boarding passes), hospitals postponed non urgent surgeries, banks (including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America) were unable to offer certain services, retailers (including Starbucks) were unable to process payments, and small businesses were left unable to run payroll, operate phone services, or sign contracts.

• All-in, ~8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices running the CrowdStrike software experienced the “blue screen of death.”
• Many affected users are already back up and running, but it could take weeks for others depending on the system in use.

CrowdStrike is a Ron Burgundy-sized big deal in the cybersecurity world. Founded in 2011 and publicly traded since 2019, the company (market cap: ~$74 billion; -11% on Friday) counts ~60% of Fortune 500 companies and more than half of the Fortune 1,000 among its ~29,000 customers.

👀 Looking ahead: Y2.0K?… As major businesses increasingly rely on a small subset of vendors for critical operations – and outdated technology utilized by airlines, government, and other industries keeps getting stretched – many experts say these types of outages could happen more often.