I am sorry, I love technology and have done since I was a kid. But the Crowdstrike outage, which was supposedly caused by a simple security update, took down some of the largest companies in the world and caused mass chaos around the globe ...
I am sorry, I love technology and have done since I was a kid, but the Crowdstrike outage shouldn't cause this much chaos!
When 8.5 million Widows devices (PCs, laptops etc) grind to a halt, we really need to wonder if we're moving too much online. The question we need to ask ourselves is, "Where do we go from here?" and it needs answering.
"CrowdStrike said it was a simple case of human error!"
They bring in more AI and automation into the quality process, but I don't think that is the answer. Checking, checking and triple-checking at the highest level should have been the order of the day before pushing the button on any update, especially if you are the security company behind looking after some of the biggest companies in the world.
The repercussions of this is that 'threat actors' would have been quick to jump on this unfortunate error and try to make hay while the sun shines (which is a very British colloquialism for trying to optimise the opportunity) by posing as CrowdStrike help desk staff and installing malware or other nasties onto the Windows devices and potentially causing more corporate damage at a later stage.
"It's time to wind the clock back, in my most humble of opinion!"
We don't need every single piece of our life in real-time, we need to go back to common sense planning and making sure we have versions of our processes that will work offline in the event of an error of this nature.
We need people to be trained in manual or semi-manual processes should our online systems be so corrupted by broken updates, viruses and other malicious software that we can still function as a human race, aeroplanes can still land and take off, hospital operations are unaffected and other systems can still allow our daily processes to continue with absolute minimum disruption to the human race.
If all of the crass, unwanted, damaging and useless information was deleted from the Internet, we would use less power in our data centres, have fewer mental health issues and stop putting obscure thoughts into the minds of those who are more at risk of being influenced and manipulated and causing damage to themselves and others.
"It's due to our thirst to live in an instant world where a story can go viral within hours!"
I understand the benefits of being always connected and having our entire business and personal lives online, but when you can't function when these systems go down, it's time to rethink manual solutions and workflows.
That way, we can keep civilisation going in the face of a crisis such as the Crowdstrike one.
Until next time ...
PRITESH GANATRA
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